Animation and Video Life

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With the redesign finished, Animation and Video Blog (i.e. this blog) is now Animation and Video Life to bring it in line with my other blog, which I recently rebranded as The Extraordinary Tourist Life.

Why the New Name? The purpose of the new names (but same URLs) is to kind of distance both blogs from the term 'blog' and to reposition them as more online magazines. Which is really what both sites have always been - where as a blog is more of a diary or journal, at least in its original incarnation.

The addition of the word Life is very appropriate as I'll still be writing about my own projects and life inside animation and video, but it also extends to anyone's life in this field. Making it easier for me to have guest writers, should I choose to do that in the future.

Easier to Read and Navigate on Any Device One of the main goals of the redesign was to make this site more adaptable to any size screen. Whilst the site looks best on a full size screen, it now adapts…

I realize I haven't posted anything to this blog since my last update in August. Largely because I haven't really worked on any of the things mentioned in that post that I was hoping to be going on with.

Instead I've been focussed on completely upgrading and redesigning my main blog (now known as The Extraordinary Tourist Life or TET Life for short) into a more lifestyle magazine look and mobile friendly design. You should follow the link and check it out. It took quite a bit of work but I'm really proud of how it looks now.

This Blog is Getting a Makeover Whilst I'm on a roll with redesigning things (I also gave my TETAnimations Youtube channel page a mini makeover), during November I will be giving this blog a similar makeover and template to my TET Life blog. Though it definitely won't be a matching template this time. I really want my two blogs to have their own identity moving forward.

This post is a heads up for that change which will begin happening pro…

Since the last time I did a Project Update Post back in April I've become better organised by finally embracing Get It Done which is, in my opinion, the best of the many time management applications I've tried. #notsponsored.

Anyhow I amalgamated all my task lists into that app so, whilst I can't physically work on every project I've started, thought about, got bored of etc. They're all listed, and at least not forgotten.

So what am I working on over the next few months?

As promised in my post showcasing my own entry into Reallusion's Animation@Work Competition for 2018, this is my post letting you know the winners have been announced.

This time my entry didn't even manage a special mention, unlike my entry from four years ago that won a Best Animation award in its category despite being shorter, taking less time to make, and featuring far less technical skill and actual animation, than my current entry.
The fact is, in four years, awareness of CrazyTalk Animator, and the number of people who've become proficient with it has grown to a more competitive field. Demonstrated by the overall winner from 2014's competition, Garry Pye, coming in at third place with an animation that is easily streets ahead of his work with CTA from four years ago.

If you've been following my work for a while you'll be familiar with my Batman parody character Bat Storm. The character first appeared as a GoAnimate Comedy World design. When GoAnimate dropped all its fun themes in favor of Business Animations I moved the character into the 3D realm of Muvizu shortly after I purchased a license for it in 2016.

I really love Bat Storm's look in Muvizu. The thing is, as easy as Muvizu's developers claim their software is, I find trying to do any form of character animation with it to be infuriating. Which is why you haven't seen a single Bat Storm animation created in Muvizu so far.