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

.

Satan wears a dicky.

Guess what folks?
Episode 2 if finally on the air... on the net... in the net?

We managed to find a little time in our schedule to upload the movie, play around with the html thingy's and prime the warp core. So go...

enjoy.

This episode sees the start of our meteoric decline into offensive humor. It's going to get worse before it gets better kids, so strap in.

As always, if you like the show please drop me a line.

stephen@uponanimation.com

And please do tell your friends. The more feedback we receive (Good and bad.) the more likely, and quickly, it is there'll be new episodes.
~Steve.

My Valentines update.

Hey kids.
Quick update time, there's been a pause in the production of episode 3. I'm taking part in Ani-boom's "Animation Eye-doll" contest.

http://www.aniboom.com/Competition.aspx?ref=mgeneral

I was originally going to do a 60 second piece, but because the longer you take to upload the movie the fewer votes you get I'm probably only going to do a 30 second piece.

Here's who I'll be animating.
It's a parody contest or whatever, so it's a beatnik girl to sing a song called "Beatnik" which is a parody of a Brittany spears song "Toxic" or something. I'll throw a couple of gags in I'm sure, but it's more or less going to be a pretty girl shaking her bum at the camera.

As far as animation goes, it's a little more in depth than the stuff I'm doing on "The Show of Job". The character is broken up a hell of a lot more, and I almost make an entire new model for every major new pose, tough and time consuming, but the second or so I have completed thus-far looks hawt.

Hopefully I'll be done this in the next week or so, (I plan on living off of four hours sleep until it's done.) and then I'll get back on the Micro-series wagon. Matt and Mike dropped by a couple of days ago and we banged out a pretty rounded and funny script for episode 4. And Matt was a champ and did some voice re-takes for me, So I'm itching to get onto those.

Matt S. Is talking about Chicago again, This scares the crap out of me. It's been half a year and episode three ain't done yet! Well, if anything gets my ass into gear it's a con. I love having rock solid deadlines that I can't do anything about, puts a match under my butt.

Hmm... Two rear-end references in one post, an omen of things to come? Lets just say that episode 4 is butt-centric.

New process.

So a new process? Sort of, well sort of... For me at least. There's all kinds of steps that your supposed to take when your creating an animated series. But with "The Show of Job" I'm really more interested in getting things done and online.

I really enjoy the whole pre-production process. And I'm slowly adding bits and pieces of it to my own production. For example. The top image is a layout for a scene with Job and Rachel.

I sketched it on top of one of an already completed background to test out some sitting poses, and work out what new pieces I'd have to make. (no real sitting has gone on in the series yet.) When It was finished and I took a look at the scene I could see a major improvement over the usual "Straight ahead" approach I've taken with this series.

This is super super basic stuff. Anyone in animation who's reading this right now is going: "Well Duuuuhhhhhh." And yeah, fair enough. I see this process at work all the time and obviously their productions blow mine out of the water. But they also have time, manpower and oh.. A budget.

I'm still going to be skipping a lot of steps during the production of this first series. The longer I take before doing actual animation increases the window where I get bored and shelve the project. But I'm glad to see elements like this start to trickle in, in an unobtrusive manner.

~Steve.

This websites gonna get me paid and laid.

Just a quick little update to let everyone know that uponanimation.com just made $0.14.

I'll give you all a minute to digest that.

Seriously though, it's pretty cool. I threw the Google Ad's up there just to take up some space instead of having a fairly ugly placeholder. But lo-and behold, some soul took the time and effort to click on an ad and pay me with someone else's money.

I'm pretty sure that "Pay me with someone else's money." is going to be the corner stone of Upon animation's marketing blitz, It kind of rolls off the tongue.

Regardless, bagels feature prominatly in episode 3.

Episode 2 will be airing the first week of February.

Two reports in such a short span? Thing's must be picking up.

I can assure you that we'll be quite safe here, inside this fully operational web-page.

Yessir Andrea has delivered on her promise and we've got this show on the road. There's a few things to check out on the site, namely the first episode and a synopsis of episode 2. And a link to this here production blog.

I gotta tell ya, I'm pretty stoaked. Right now I'm working on some stuff from my Day-animation-job. And it's killing me to not be working on Episode three of "The show of Job." I didn't realize that the scene I just finished is the second longest one in the episode. Once I figured that out it gave me a little hope.

Episode three is turning out to be a monster. I may have to cut and slice some gags to get it down to size. I know that "5 minutes" is totally arbitrary but I've got to set boundaries and keep to them (roughly) or else this thing is going to spiral out of control.

~Steve.

Quick update

I really REALLY have to start posting more.

Website status: Pretty Frakin' awesome.

Andrea is officially blowing me out of the water when it comes to computer stuff. She's doing things with "DIV Containers"? Java script and what not. She's Ironing out the bugs as we speak and the site is looking good to launch on Monday.

I hate updating without a pic of some sort. So here's Job's drink of choice: "Baggermister" liquid panty remover. (Not that it's ever helped Job.)

I put the opening/end credits on the two finished episodes. Re-watching them again is pretty damn painful. I can see all the mistakes and errors most of which I'm sure will get overlooked by the audience in general. I have to remember that this is all a learning process. And force myself to not go back and fix all the little mistakes.

If I did that the show would never air, and I figure it'll be nice to look back on the first few episodes when it's all said and done and feel good about how far we've come.

Heck I feel that way about episode 3 and we're only 2 scene's in. The jump in maturity (Filmmaking wise, not content wise.) is obvious from ep01 to ep02. And strikingly apparent with episode 03. Which calms me some considering the friggin hoops I've had to jump through for number 3.

It's been 5 months since the Chicago con but things are finally rolling along on their own momentum again.

Hope to see everyone at the new webpage next week!

~Steve.

The struggle has been hard fought, but an end is in sight.

So what's a really smart thing to do? Well, changing software versions mid production for one.
I got all hot and bothered reading about the changes made to ToonBoom 3.5, assuming that it couldn't be anything but an improvement of the current version. I was, it seems... Incorrect.

It's a whole new world, which is good in theory. However in practice it turns out to be a whole new world of bugs and glitches. Toonboom has basically been reset and everyone who got the new version is playing "Hunt the bug" for a patch that will be out by the end of the year.

Long story short, it's made production on the new episode very, very frustrating. I've finally wrestled some decent results out of it however, so I'm finally into the meat of the animation.