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

What's Not In Your Wallet?

Well, it finally happened to me. We have had security breaches before, but it was always expected because the attempts followed one of the family loosing a credit card, leaving a check book, or my wife had her purse stolen once. But we always discovered the breach before any money (except ant cash we might have had) was taken.

This week-end started out so nice. We had a break in the 100 plus degree heat, there was a breeze, even a smattering of rain. We had spent most of Saturday morning on the back patio just enjoying it all. Birds were at the feeders, the chickens were scratching around in the lawn, still damp from the shower, the dogs were lazily sniffing around the yard, it was nearly perfect.

The Phone rang and I got up to answer. It was the VISA Fraud center asking me to verify some purchases. I had gotten these calls before. If I or my wife ordered something expensive on the interweb, VISA would call to check and I always voiced my appreciation that they were watching my back. A recorded message asked me to verify several charges made with a charge card ending in 2993. It was at that point I snapped to attention.

My wife, Karen and I have worked very hard in the past eight or so years to eliminate our credit cards. Having each been married before, we had started our new life together with old debt that our spouses had not paid. In addition, we were both working independent doing film, theater, and TV spots and Arizona had made some political errors with the MLK holiday that, like now with the SB1070 law and its dubious revisions, shows coming to Arizona are canceling or just relocating. Work dries up and you live off your credit.

Bad idea,

It took twelve years to get out of that trap. Finally four years ago, just before the housing crunch fell on us all, I refinanced our home and nailed everything that was left. Credit card became plastic confetti in my shedding machine. Bank of America, MasterCard, Sears, JCPenny, American Express, Visa Silvers, Visa Platinums, Visa Visas, all fell prey to the whirling knives as they were paid in full and closed forever. It was ecstasy.

Since we have had a few choice store cards that relate to my wife's company. One General Visa card from our bank and our checking debit cards. No credit balances over $1000.00, everything else is cash. Before the housing market values fell, we even still had over half the value of our home in equity.

So the mechanical voice on the phone said the account ended in 2993, with so few cards left, I know them all. This was not a credit card; this was our checking debit card. This was going to be bad. I listened as the mechanical "man" at the other end of the phone line ran off four charges done that morning at a Wal-Mart in Columbus Georgia. I immediately chose option "5" speak to a human being and was pleasantly surprised that the person answering spoke perfect English. I identified myself and after the obligatory "And what can I do for you today?" question I said, "Stop the card." .
"So these are not your charges?"
"I, and my wife are here in Phoenix, the charges are in Georgia. Stop the card."
"Are you in possession of the cards?"
"I will check to be absolutely sure that both cards are here, but in the mean time stop the card!" I said and put down the phone. Racing into the kitchen I checked both my wallet and Karen's purse and, yes, we had both our cards. Back on the phone, "I have both cards in my hand, those cannot be our charges."
"I see another charge has come through, I put a stop on the card."
"Another charge? Came through just now?" I asked. In my mind I could see dollar bill lining up with little arms raised and being marched out of my account.

So now there were five. Four in Georgia at the same Wal-Mart and one in Tennessee at a furniture store. The woman on the other end of the line assured me that no more charges would be passed and gave me a 800 telephone number to file a claim for the bad charges. After she hung up, I tried the 800 number and got a voice that said the number "could not be completed as dialed."

Perfect.

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

Why Blog

I spent most of today reading Blogs. Not watch Vlogs as I think they are kind of pretentious. I think it's the camera. People think that they have to put on a show "for their audience." In that respect I'm no different.

However, a Blog is the modern day version of putting pen to paper. Written words tend to have more depth and thought behind them. After all it's not just flip on a camera, smile, and pretend to be chatting with a friend. There are things to deal with.

English, for one. American English, specifically. A language as blended and multi-sourced as the society that created it. The spelling rules are contrived and even dynamic. Tomb and comb are not pronounced the same but sure look like they should. Then there is punctuation. To comma or not to comma? Grammar. MS Word is always warning me about run on or incomplete sentences. And its not always right either.

So language is a barrier to Blogging. If you don't know your language, you could embarrass yourself completely. You didn't just misspeak, you wrote it down. The very action implies cognitive thought. You were writing, you had all the time in the world to check your facts before you published and you still got it wrong.

The process itself is also a barrier to Blogging. Unless you have a driving subject in mind, that first page can look big, white, and blank. It's going to take time to do this.

Then there is the vernacular. A fancy word for HOW you want to say what you mean.

1) One is about to invest minutes or perhaps hours of ones life selecting, arranging, and rearranging a group of words in such a manner so as to perfectly purvey your meaning to the masses. And in so doing, change them.

2) Yer about to lay it all out der and get em to give a shit.

Two distinctly different styles, both hoping to get their readers to change.

But change what? Their socks? Change their minds. The most difficult of all changes to make and you will not be there to explain exactly what you meant. You may want them to think, to empathize, to laugh, cry, realize, love, hate, or wonder in the magic of your words. Even if your only purpose is to entertain, and not necessarily to inform, what good is it if they don't get it?

The next to last element in a Blog is you. Or at least how you want yourself to be perceived by your reader. Are you to be a voice of authority, a poet, a helpless or hapless victim, a friend, a trusted advocate, a comedian, a mother or father figure, or an ass, airing yours and everyone else's dirty laundry to the world. Who are you? And who are you to them?

The last element is WHY? Why are you writing? Win friends and influence people? Be famous? There are some 100,000 Blog sites on the internet, public and private, and the chances of yours being read is slim. The chance of a response, or comment is about 1 in fifty readers. So don't count on that. So why do it. Why pour your guts out, preset a dissertation of facts and figure, promote your idea, ask questions of yourself and/or the universe? Why do it at all if it may never be read by anyone?

When I write a Blog it's a stepped procedure. Usually I open MS Word and perhaps a copy of Firefox on a Google search page because I never know what I'm not going to know. I usually have some idea, even a strong idea of what I want to "talk" about. That said my Blogs rarely end up being what I had in mind at the onset. Like stories I have written, they seem to take on a life of their own and go where they will. Then I go back and proof read, change, improve, finish thoughts that may not yet be complete on the page. Occasionally, but not very often, (some might say not often enough) toss the whole works.

Next I copy and paste into a program called TextPad. A text only program that strips out all of the invisible commands about fonts, paragraph structures, and so on that MS Word leaves in the document.

That done it's on to a suitable graphic, if I want one. Something to give the reader a visual anchor to my thoughts. If I have nothing, I may create something, or on lazy days find something on the webs and link to it. The later I like least and sometimes has a habit if disappearing as the other site changes. But I won't steal it. So graphic or no, time to upload.

Again copy and paste onto the site and again reread, and make last minute changes. Close my eyes, click submit, or publish, or whatever and walk away.

Why do I do it? I have to. I stopped for a long time and missed it. I tried other outlets, but I always come back to this keyboard.

When I surf the Blogs I try and remember just what it takes for me to do mine. If I think I can contribute, I comment. Just to let them know that someone read them. In this vast wasteland of Blogs, Vlogs, videos, and music, someone read what they wrote and answered. And in so doing, was changed.

Be Well.

My New Camera

I got a new camera to Vlog with, and take other videos of course. A Toshiba Camileo H30. A lovely little camera that records to an SDHC card . NO MORE TAPES...YEAH!

A slip of my beard trimmer gave me a new (sans beard) look for the summer.

And a quick belated Mom's Day wish to round things out.

Be Well


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