Taking No Hostages...

So I have been absent for over a year and a half, partly because I've been busy, but mostly because I did not feel that I had anything to say that anyone would be interested in reading.  Even if someone was reading.

Simply put, I had a series of major changes in my life, all linked, and happening in what seemed to me to be a rapid succession of cause and effect. 

I was happy about none of it.   

So what to do with my now empty days and nights?  

My kitchen more or less BEFORE

Call all my friends and cry on their shoulders until they began avoiding me? Nah. 

Write it all out here so my private life would be spooled on so many backup tapes and archived for a hundred years? Again, nah. 

Maybe curl up in a fetal position on my bed at night and cry myself through it all?  

Definitely, nah.

Instead I did something that I had been wanting to do for a very long time, but my ex and I could never agree on what was to be done....  I remodeled my house. Not that I could afford it, but thanks to some timely offers of deferred interest from some local do-it-yourself retailers, I pulled it off.

So days at work and working nights.  It took eleven months. If I could have rustled up some more credit, I'd still be at it.

More or less AFTER

Some rooms got just paint, others got more.  Ceiling fans, light fixtures, paint, furniture, drapes, floors, cabinets.. nothing was sacred.  For the first few months, my right hand held little but a three pound sledge hammer.  I had lived in this house for nearly nineteen years and had changed only the laundry room and a bathroom.  Now those were the only rooms semi safe (although the bathroom did get a change of towels and shower curtain). The kitchen would be the biggest change. Lights, cabinets, floors, ceiling, counter tops... the works.

This would be my sanctuary, my therapy, the route to a new life.  I would do it myself (which I did about 98%). I would not go down, and if I did, I was not taking anybody down with me.

No hostages.

Scene 1 Background Painting

Although I would love to say that the activities pictured in my previous blog were being repeated again this year, it's just not the case. Due to a series of sob stories which I will not burden you with, my vacation is a "stay-cation", as in stay at home.

But one good thing has come out of it. In the last week I finally finished the background design for the first sequence in my fall holiday cartoon. One that I started last year and didn't even come close to finishing anything but the dance movement study (Which you can see as "Not Quite A Nutcracker" on the second page of this Blog or on YouTube).

The frame above is actually eleven layers which will be animated separately to create the illusion of 3D space. There are details (such as stars and such) which are only added in the final shot. All in all I expect this painting to be on screen for about 10 seconds or so.

And that is why cartooning alone take so much time.

Be Well.

48 Weeks A Year

Forty-eight weeks a year I toil for the city, fixing dimming systems, relay control systems, lighting consoles, sound equipment, network based audio/visual systems in five theaters and one million square feet of convention center. Putting right what always goes wrong.

Two weeks in the summer and two weeks at Christmas, I don’t.

It’s summer

Karen's Gypsy

The illustration at left was not done by me. Although I wish I had. It was done by my wife, Karen, a very talented scenic artist. This was done on a software platform called "Dabbler 2." By Fractal Design. It's rare for her to work on such a small scale as most of what she does is on a 30 X 60 foot muslin drop (I get her to give me some photos and I'll do a separate blog on painting really BIG.

I on the other hand have always been a cartoonist. Event the most serious sketches I have done always have a cartoon edge to them. That's why animation interests me so. I have piles of files of ideas that didn't work. My biggest problem is time, and perhaps I'm a bit lazy. My reason or excuse is that I have already put in 8 to 10 hours by the time I get home from work, then spend time with the pets, the family and dinner, and it's getting late. The job starts early.

The type of sketch cartoon I want to do does not really lend itself to the "cut-out" style of cartooning I have done so far. My attempts at drawing each frame ends up with me finishing a few seconds of animation after literally months of nights with my eyes watering as I try to finish one more frame before I go to bed.

Thus far none of the animations I started this way ever got anywhere. By the time it's just starting to take shape, I'm bored with the story and I'm ready to move on. What I need is to find a way to meld the two disciplines and figure out when to use which to move the story along.

But I have time, I think, thus far it's been an expensive hobby, but I've enjoyed myself.

From A Beginner Animator

I joined YouTube in 2007 planning to use it as an outlet for all the cartoons I would be making. It would be wondrous with a fantastic following.

And it almost happened that way.

The problem was, when I opened my YouTube "Channel" I knew almost nothing about creating cartoons. I had jumped in and was not prepared at all. At my disposal was Paint Shop Pro (Which was still owned by Jasc back then and was a lovely paint and photo program for $99 US) and The Microsoft Movie Editor which came with Windows® XP. Not much in the way of tools, but I had to come up with some sort of place holder for my channel. And this is what I posted:




It's still there actually, even though it's a rough bit of animation, it was, after all, my first.

I began to search for animation programs, not knowing what the heck I was looking for. I'm married and the father of two sons, so I had a tiny budget for starting a new "hobby." What I thought I wanted was Macromedia Flash, but I was surprised to find that it had been eaten by Adobe® and was now out of my price range (See? I wasn't a complete idiot, I did do some research). Any way pirate software was out, because I don't believe in it. A craftsman is worth his wages and all that (but not necessarily the triple wages Adobe was asking). Obviously Maya, 3d studio, and all were right out of my price range and I wasn't sure that 3D was something I should jump into. I mean, don't you need to crawl before you can walk? I came across ToonBoom. I got my first copy of ToonBoom Studio on sale for $250 US (it's $299. now). After pouring through the video tutorials and making several false starts, Two months later my first real cartoon/vlog appeared:





It was up on YouTube just a few weeks later when Lisasimpson, acting as a guest editor, she chose it to be featured on YouTube's front page. A very big deal in those days. At the same time, I had upgraded my computer hardware and the Windows installation crashed. I mean at the EXACT same time. My video went from 315 views in three weeks to 100,000 views that Sunday morning and I was oblivious to it all.

So now it's nearly 3 years later and I have uploaded a few more toons. Each takes a couple of months to build, the Vlog type are faster because I can reuse my character with only a few changes, but the long periods between uploads lost the audience. Now my toons are back where they started with a few hundred view, which is fine by me. I am still learning after all.

For the record, and through a long series of upgrades, I am now using ToonBoom Animate Pro2 as my animation platform. And although I would love to have the Adobe CS5 Production Premium Suite with all the bells and whistles, I still use Premiere Elements ($119 US) to do my editing. The FREE but extraordinary Audacity works overtime to record, edit and clean all my audio tracks. I finally bought my first version of ToonBoom Storyboard ($199 US) to help me assemble my ideas. And I would not be anywhere if it were not for the free music tracks so lovingly composed and shared by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).

And the last element is time. Lots of time. I you are reading this and just starting out, you can get into playing with animation programs on a budget. There are even rudimentary or watermarked programs out there for free even ToonBoom. But be ready to give lots of time. Watch you favorite cartoon and stay for the credits. All the names that go past are positions you must fill with your own time. It is very rewarding when you get it done, but the speed of the progress, or lack of it, especially when you have a day job, was and is my biggest frustration. But if you really want to do it, you can. I did, and I still know almost nothing.

Be Well