Skip to main content

Animation: The Star Wars Fan


With Disney taking over the Star Wars franchise you can be sure there will still be Star Wars fans in the future - still bitching about how the original trilogy is still the best and how everything else pales by comparison no doubt.

In a not too distant future, The Tourist and his travel companion, Mia, are standing on a subway platform with their R2D2 replica droid. They are approached by a Metro City Policeman, who just happens to be a Star Wars fan, and sees an opportunity to recreate a famous scene from the film.



Behind the scenes, this GoAnimation is the most spontaneous I've made in a long time. I happened to notice that fellow GoAnimator, RoTV, had made a character approximation of himself using GoAnimates Anime theme and wondered what I could come up with trying to create a version of me.

Thus I came up with blonde haired 'Tourist' that you see in my video.

I always depict myself wearing suits. I don't know why because I am the person least most likely to wear a suit, unless the occasion specifically says 'formal', then I'll wear the one suit I actually own. However, the final character gave off a bit of a Dr Who vibe to me (it was the suit). Since he is the Tourist, a travelling companion made sense. Mia is what I came up with.

GoAnimate's Anime character creator is very new. The characters you can create are largely based around teen, school age, characters. Mia was my best effort at creating a mature female character that wouldn't make the Tourist look like he had a thing under age girls.

My favorite period from Dr Who is Tom Baker's run at the character, specifically the period when his traveling companion was Romana (Romana II, Lalla Ward), a fellow Time Lord from his home planet, Gallifrey, and robot dog companion, K-9. Consequently the Tourist and Mia needed a robot companion along the same line. Solarbaby's wonderful character prop of R2-D2 was the obvious choice without any effort on my part.

Why anyone would be travelling with an R2 unit I don't know but it could happen. There are so many replica units around as we speak, maybe the Tourist made his own with future technology that enables it to do everything the original movie R2 unit can?

Now I had three characters that I needed to do something with. I put them in a subway scene - thinking, well he is a tourist so maybe he's doing some touring on the subway.

Having watched the remake of Total Recall recently,  I remembered the robotic UFB security soldiers from that film. GoAnimate's Space Citizens theme has a soldier style character that could take on a similar role, giving the impression that my characters were on a subway in the future rather than the present.

From there it was really a short leap to noticing the similarity to my scenario and that of the famous Landspeeder confrontation between Luke Skywalker, Ben Kenobi, C-3PO, R2-D2 and a Stormtrooper at Mos Eisley.

How could a die hard Star Wars fan pass that up?!

I pretty much started writing the dialogue to see how the conversation might pan out.

The resolution is supposed to suggest that the Tourist possibly has some similar Jedi mind control like ability but a comment by Pitch to the Rhino Productions on the video's GoAnimate page suggests that the Metro Cop picks up on the line "You don't need to see her papers" as a continuation of his attempt to recreate the scene. Hence he's not actually being mind controlled, he's just acting out his scene as planned, forgetting his suspicions about Mia. I like that interpretation better than mine as it does make the scene just a little funnier.

You might ask why a mix up in pop culture references would cause the cop to become suspicious. Aside from the fact that there is an obvious reminder of Star Wars in the R2 unit, I was thinking that perhaps such a mistake might indicate that a person is not a local on Earth. Who knows - maybe they have a problem with aliens disguising themselves as humans and a pop culture faux pas could be an indicator of deception.

You probably noticed I voiced all three characters. I really don't like asking people to voice my animations. Not the fun little projects like this. It causes delays and you end up with all different levels of recording quality and performance. I figure I'll just start practicing on developing my own voices that have enough difference to register as different people. It kind of works in this I think.

So that's the story. No technical magic in this one. Just characters and script. I hope you enjoyed it.

Comments

Post a Comment

This blog is monitored by a real human. Generic or unrelated spam comments with links to sites of dubious relativity may be DELETED.

I welcome, read, and respond to genuine comments relating to each post. If your comment isn't that save me some time by not posting it.

Popular posts from this blog

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 1)

Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D  which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D

2D Animation Side Hustle - How to Package, Upload, Optimize, Price, and Promote Your Content in the Reallusion 2D Marketplace

T his is the final post in my four part, 2D Animation Side Hustle series on Selling in the Reallusion 2D Marketplace. I'll look at how to package up your content and upload it to the Marketplace, how to optimize your listings, price, and how to sell through your store backend as well as off site through social media and other channels. If you haven't read previous articles in the series click these links for Part 1 - Can You Make Real Money , Part 2 - Finding Niches , and Part 3 - What to Sell . Before getting started you'll need to register as a Content Developer in order to see the backend of your store on the Reallusion Marketplace . Packaging Content and Uploading to the Marketplace Since the release of Cartoon Animator 5 the software has a built in Package Manager that makes it easy to assemble and upload your Content to the Marketplace. Reallusion has a comprehensive, official video (embeded below) that quickly explains the entire process in less than seven minutes. 

Moho 14 Released - Still the Best 2D Animation Software for Indy Animators on a Budget

Moho 14 Released. Regular readers know I am a Reallusion, Cartoon Animator advocate through and through. Hands down I would recommend Cartoon Animator 5 first over Lost Marble's Moho 14 to anyone who is just starting in 2D animation, is a team of one, or just needs to animate as quickly as possible. However, feature for feature, Moho is, arguably, the best 2D animation software for the rest of us who can't justify a Toon Boom Harmony , or Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (and even with their applications Moho is very competitive on features). You can get started with Moho Debut for just USD$59.99 which is a cut down version of Moho Pro but it still has the most essential features needed for 2D animation. While Moho Pro is a whopping USD$399.99 (Cartoon Animator, which only has one version, is just USD$149.00) upgrades to new version numbers come down to a quarter of the price at USD$99.00. Even though Reallusion just released features like Motion Pilot Puppet Animation and

Wonder Unit Storyboarder - Free Storyboarding Software for People Who Can (or Can't) Draw

Wonder Unit Storyboarder.  As an independent and solo animator I'm always tempted to try and skip storyboarding my animated shorts because they're usually only single scene sketch comedy type jokes. As a result I have many unfinished projects that kind of petered out due to having no clear finishing line. Storyboarding your productions, no matter how small, gives you a step by step guide of every shot that needs to be completed (no planning shots as you animate). It also allows you to create an animatic that gives you a rough preview of the finished production. In short, you shouldn't skip storyboards as they, generally, increase the chance of the project being completed. Disclaimer - I'm Not a Fan of Storyboarder Upfront, Wonder Unit's Storyboarder  is not my preferred storyboarding software. However it's completely free, has a number of very compelling featu

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List 2019-2023 - Animation and Video Life

Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2019-2022. It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/service had to be US$

Start Your 2D Animation Side Hustle - Sell Your Cartoon Animator Characters, Props, Scenes, and Motion Files in the Reallusion 2D/3D Marketplace

Have you thought about starting a side hustle selling your original Cartoon Animator assets in the Reallusion 2D/3D Marketplace ? In this article, the first in a series on selling in the marketplace, I'll give you an overview of what's involved, why you should give it some thought, and whether you can earn enough to quit your day job (or at least have a worthwhile side hustle). If you're an artist with any kind of drawing skills, and you're creating your own original characters, props, scenes, and even motion files for your Cartoon Animator projects, then setting up your own store in the Reallusion Marketplace should be a no brainer. You're making content already, it doesn't cost you anything to set up, and Reallusion only takes a 30% commission from each item sold. (If you think that's a lot, I'll address that further down). Don't be put off if you think your art skills aren't up to professional standards. There are plenty of artists with naïve

Prome AI Sketch Render Tool - Your Tradigital Clean Up and Colorist Artist for Character and Background Design

Random character head, Biro sketches drawn by TET (left). Render by PromeAI (right) using Prome's Sketch Render tool set to 'Comon:Cartoon, Render Mode: Outline'. W hile I don't do New Year Resolutions, one of my plans for the year ahead is to do more of my own art. Specifically character design drawn in an actual, physical sketchbook.  To that end, I have been spending the last half hour of most days drawing a page or two of random biro sketches in my sketchbook and posting the pages to my Instagram account  (this link will take you to one of my posts). These sketches are mostly practicing my skills because I don't really draw regularly anymore. Here is a tip, if you do this kind of sketching, and push yourself to keep doing it, you will see many drawings that could be taken further, even if you don't have anything they're suited for just at the moment. Which is where my second favorite AI Image Tool (after Leonardo.ai )  PromeAI comes into play. PromeAI