Reddy, Super Bluey, and The Great Greensbury. I've got an idea...

One of my biggest stumbling blocks in moving forward with my own animation has been coming up with ideas that I can get excited about.

Even with using time saving animation software like CrazyTalk Animator 3 creating animated shorts is still a lot of work that you need to stay motivated for. As much as I want to earn a living from creating my own animated shorts, the higher priority is to enjoy creating them... you know, if you enjoy what you're doing you'll never work a day in your life - that kind of thing.

When I got back into creating animated shorts in 2008, after discovering GoAnimate, I was clearly having a lot of fun in the years before that site transitioned from allowing anyone to create animated stories to a business explainer video creation tool. I made somewhere around 180 animated shorts over the space of about 4 years - roughly 3 animations per month.

Most of my animations were either humorous shorts, sketch comedy, or sitcom like stories told in parts over several animated shorts. You can read about almost every one of them in this blog if you select the tag GoAnimate (those animations were part of the origin of this blog).

Rashy's plans for world
domination hit a snag.

One of the things I enjoyed most about creating those animations was carrying over characters from one story into the next, creating my own little TET animated universe.

That all started when I took Paul Dini's sock monkey characters, Super Rica and Rashy (licensed by GoAnimate at the time), and re-imagined Rashy as power hungry megalomaniac with visions of becoming 'The Boss of Everything'.

If you watch the first four animations in the playlist below you can see the evolution of Rashy, from the original stand alone short, through to him becoming a super villain when I mixed him with Underdog's world (another set of characters licensed by GoAnimate at the time). Note these animations are from 2008-2009 when dialogue was mostly done with speech balloons rather than voice actors on GoAnimate.

MIB with Obama and AKON.

From there Rashy went on to appear in my Men in Black parody staring AKON and Barack Obama as two MIB agents. As well as it's epic sequel MIB II.

All of these shorts had some of my best comedy writing and probably would have continued if GoAnimate hadn't decided to not renew the various licenses on the characters you could animate.

To Cut a Long Story Short...

Recently it occurred to me that I've had my own monkey characters, that I designed way back in the early 1990's. Lately I've taken to calling them 'color monkeys' because they're all the same kind of monkey but they can be either red, green, or blue.

The Great Greensbury, Super Bluey,
Kev, and Reddy.

I could easily reboot the fun I had with Super Rica and Rashy but with my own original characters.

So I did a slight redesign of my monkeys feet - because their original, impossibly big, human like, feet make them difficult to animate - and gave each one a name, kind of inspired by Paul Dini's characters; Reddy, Super Bluey, and the Great Greensbury (guess which name goes to which color of monkey).

I like the idea of them being owned by a Hollywood script writer, so rather than create someone kind of like Paul Dini's 'Dad' character I thought, why not just use Paul Dini's friend, writer/director, Kevin Smith as a base? I'm a huge fan of Kevin so why not?

Just to be clear, although the character's look and occupation is based on Kevin Smith, it's not actually meant to be Kevin Smith. Over time his personality will develop. I just don't see the point in trying to design a totally original character when creating a Kevin Smith like analogue will give me a base to build upon into something that's my own.

From these four characters I could easily build a world of my own characters (I have so many I've designed over the years) that I feel audiences would enjoy as much as the GoAnimate community enjoyed my work there (at the time I was one of the highest viewed GoAnimators on GoAnimate).

Transferring some of the ideas from those past animations into fresh new takes and stories really does sound fun to me. I feel, with this idea, I'm in a good place moving forward.

Comments

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

Dollars Mocap: Full Body Webcam Motion Capture (Including Hands and Fingers) For iClone and Cartoon Animator

Even though I should be further away from the camera Dollars Mocap MONO still does a good job of tracking my arms, hands and fingers. Ever since I wrote my series on becoming a VTuber , discovering it was possible to do full body motion capture, including hands and fingers, with just software and a webcam, I've been on the look out for any motion capture software that can bring that functionality to Cartoon Animator. Dollars Mocap is a low cost motion capture application with a free trial that I learned about through the YouTube Channel Digital Puppets and their test video . It can record full body, upper body, arms and hands, and facial mocap from a live video source or pre-recorded video. Investigating further, I discovered not only does Dollars Mocap have a free iClone7, iClone8 character profile file download (look for it at the bottom of the main program download page), so you can use the saved motions with iClone8, they've also got a demo video for how to convert your

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

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

Can't Draw Characters? Create Highly Detailed Characters from Simple Drawings and Prompts Free with Realtime Canvas by Leonardo.AI

Leonardo.ai's Realtime Canvas. Create highly detailed images from simple drawings. I f you've had an idea for a character but don't have the artistic skill to design it yourself, or the budget to hire someone to do the design work for you, then Leonardo.ai's Realtime Canvas may be your new creative partner. Sure you could use Leonardo.ai's regular text prompt to image generator but that can be very hit and miss, and may take many generations before you finally craft a complex prompt that's getting something close to what you had in mind. Realtime Canvas, on the other hand, lets you craft a simple text prompt and draw a rough image, both of which you can keep refining until you get a final, real time, updated image that looks close to (and probably better than) what you had in mind. Using Realtime Canvas Once you've signed up for a free account with Leonardo.ai (which will give you 150 free credits, renewed daily), click on Realtime Canvas, from the side

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

Animation and Video Life

Search This Blog