More Short WIP

coloursample02
Originally uploaded by sloan_man69

Here's one of the characters with some colour work done by my lovely wife Andrea.

bgsc10

bgsc10
Originally uploaded by sloan_man69

Layout for an animated short I'm working on with my wife.

bgsc36

bgsc36
Originally uploaded by sloan_man69

Layout for an animated short I'm working on with my wife.

The Problem With Big Boots

The Problem With Big Boots
Originally uploaded by sloan_man69

Failure to launch.

Anyone who's done a little freelance is used to having jobs fizzle up and dissapear. It happens for a number of reasons. An agreement for money/content cannot be reached, artistic differences between the parties and sometimes for mysterious unknown reasons the job will simply vanis *poof* like Kaiser Soze.

I'm used to it, I don't get bent out of shape or upset. The only reason I'm bringing this up is because a job which seemed like it would be honestly FUN to work on pulled the vanishing act. And I'm a little sad that I wont get to follow through with all the idea's that bubbled up while planning the project.

Anyway, here's a page of sketches I did while brainstorming.

Some more designs.

There's been a fairly large change in plans for me, and it's going to affect whats happening with Upon Animation.

I'm currently teaching animation at Algonquin College here in Ottawa, It's a part time gig which leave me plenty of time to work on something else. However it looks like that something else is going to be more of a buisnessy thing and less of a online animated series thing.

So I'm going to keep developing, it might just be a longer development cycle than a year. I've also been bandying around the Idea of doing an online comic instead (Much more managable.)

Point being, plans have changed, but I don't intend to stop creating.

On the horizon

Here's a preview of whats next for Upon Animation.

Monday Morning.

Music Video is complete.
Music by: Kupek.
Download the album for free at www.radiomaru.com

Here are the last couple of shots from the Music Video, before it's completion this weekend.
I've played around with lighting and atmosphere more than any project I've ever worked on before. It's a lot of forethought and tough work, but it adds SO much to the final project. (I think anyway.)

More images from the music video.

The music video is quickly reaching it's end. I've blown through almost half of the finished BG's and I'm putting them into the scene's and adding some lighting effects to help the overall look of the piece. It's coming together quite nicely.

Screen cap from music video, with the final background added and lighting added. (The BG was acctually too small when I imported it, so it's a little fuzzy. I'll be using a higher DPI version in the final export.)

Clean version.

Another rough piece for the music video.

This is a piece of rough work from a music Video I'm finishing up with all of my sudden free time.

Hello old friend.

Well it finally happened.

Despite what we sneered at our teachers saying: "I'll never need math in real life" Math just saved my ass a bunch of work. I did a bunch of art assets in Flash, and then exported it to Toon Boom. Now the stuff in Flash was done in a 12fps timeline and my toonboom work is in 24fps. Needless to say, things were right cocked up.



Luckily I realized I could just double all the frame counts and re-work the stuff in flash lickity split. Saved me having to scrub through and find all the key points again.



So there you go math, you get my grudging respect.

Toon Boom and the UA podcast.

So anyone who's read the blog knows that I'm a fan of the Toon Boom family of software. Currently the best digital animation software to be had IMHO.

My rampant fanaticism has resulted in them making me their first user story for 2008, a very nice birthday present indeed.
Check out the article here:
http://www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudio/userStories/2008/?id=Sloan

I come off pretty harsh on flash, I must have been having a bad day or something when I did the interview. I'm seriously not like, gunning for the overthrow of flash. It's an amazing piece of software that runs circles around Toon Boom in area's like application development or website production, I just hate seeing people blindly tied to it as an animation platform.

We've been recording a podcast the last few weeks at our production meetings. There's no real form or anything to them yet, once we've got a grip of them under our belt I'll start to dish them out on the site.

...

Oh the site! still not updated you say? Well Andrea, our webmiester general, has gotten a little upset at the fact that We've been featured on CHF and now as a TB User of the month, and the site is still under construction. So MAYBE just maybe early February will see a more robust webpage.

~Steve.

Cold Hard Flash.

Wow, http://www.coldhardflash.com/ which is pretty much my goto blog for web animation news put a post up on their main page about "The Show of Job", which is way way awesome of them.

So in case someone links here from the CHF I figured I'd do an update. Episode 3 status: Still where it was at the last check, 99% done, needs some touch ups and audio re-records. However we're sitting on episode 3 for the moment. Episode 4 is well under way, the plan is to get both episodes finished so that we can have a new release in January and February. Then while those two months are taken care of we can motor through episode 5 and have it posted for mid March, or early April.

Darren Bird, who you may recall is our musical director, has taken on co-animation and some design work, this has allowed us to charge ahead and actually get stuff accomplished. Pretty much the whole crew here at 'Upon Animation' is working full time in THE REAL WORLD, which sadly leaves little time for Job, Rach, Mel and the rest of the gang.

Here's some random episode 4 art to prove how totally not dead this project is!

~Steve.

Oh dear Oh dear....

Well it's almost time... it's almost one year since I finished two episodes of The Show of Job in two months, what a pace.

Well what have I been doing since then? where the heck is episode 3?

Well, stuff like this keeps happening: http://www.lulu.tv/ I keep comming across stuff like this on the net, be it new digital channels or contests or whatever. I get interested, I get involved and then I have to put EVERYTHING else aside and meet the deadline for these random happenings.

lulu.tv looks pretty cool, I respect these cat's from their print on demand service. Shane Glines has a great book out through them called 'S Curves' check it out: http://www.lulu.com/cartoonretro

So I did this thing, it's a presidential campaign ad.

http://www.lulu.tv/?p=12552

Now that that's off my Back I'll get back to editing the final cut of episode 3.

Pinky swear.

Excuses excuses...

Who's this rugged individual right here? Well you'll just have to wait and see.

He's this totally tertiary character that I've been struggling with since I started to work on episode 3. He's only in it for a bit, but he gets some SUPER CHOICE lines, Thanks to Matt and Mike who both had a hand in writing them, and Mike also lends a sexy Latin vibe for his voice.

Anyway, since he was such a pain in the ass I thought I'd show what the process of getting him to this stage was like.

Stage one: I just draw whatever the hell happens to pop into my brain while listening to the audio track and reading the script or any notes I may have taken on the character.

Here the character is a little more fleshed out looking that the other characters in the show. That will probably bug me.

Stage Two: Simplifying the character somewhat, making him a little sleazier/Dangerous/Salty. Still not doin' it for me.

Stage Three: "When in doubt, go WAY left field." Filled the dude out a little and slapped him in a Hawaiian shirt. I like him, he's a little rough but I think a winner... just not for this character. These lines coming out of this guy just don't make sense.

Stage Four: I... I just don't know what to say... they can't all be winners?

In the end I went for a look that was a marriage of the first and third. I know eh still doesn't jive with the rest of the characters, but like I've said before this show is my sandbox. I'm building stuff up and seeing what sticks and what crumples.

So yeah... These sketches were weeks to months apart. a heck of a lot of time to spend on a guy who literally has SECONDS of screen time. But I felt he was going to be important enough to warrant a decent design.

This is the sort of thing I need to get a handle on if I'm ever going to finish 12 freaking episodes.

~Steve.

Man-o-man.

So this aniboom competition just kicked-my-ass. Working on it pretty much every morning/night/weekend. (With a few exceptions.)

But yeah its done.

kind of.

There's only thirty second finished, and brother, there's only going to BE 30 seconds finished. I've got a boatload of excuses to lay on you, but right now I'm going to go with... lets see... AH!

The competition ends April 30th, and the sooner you post your (very) short the more votes your likely to garner. My spy network revealed that some of the other shorts have in excess of 500 "views" on me at this point, So I figured I'd get on that.

So it looks good I think, and one night after the post it's already had close to 50 views and is holding at a respectable four out of five bomb symbols. (?)

Oh "ani-BOOM" I get it.

Anyway, here's some screen caps and a link to the actual film.

~Steve

http://www.aniboom.com/Player.aspx?v=8158

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