Full Energy - New GoAnimate Theme

GoAnimate recently launched the premium (i.e. you need to buy it) theme Full Energy. A select bunch of long time GoAnimators were given the theme to play with, myself included. No doubt to help showcase the theme as much as a reward for being long time supporters of the site.

Initial reactions to the theme on GA's forum were mixed (read this thread and this one). One notable comment was from GA's CEO, Alvin who had this to say about the theme:

I personally think the Full Energy theme is quite ugly. However, that's the whole point to that particular animation style. We realize it probably won't appeal to everyone on the site, but we feel it is important to encompass more styles.

Full Energy is going to be one of those things that people either love or hate!

So what is Full Energy? Well if you've seen Adult Swim's Robot Chicken Animations then you'll have some idea of what to expect from Full Energy. Like Robot Chicken it incorporates mashed together dolls (in this case I think it's a Ken doll) and other props to make up the characters.

Currently the theme features three, Energy drink drinking, trailer park inhabitants, Dave (mashed up Ken doll), Boss (a Red Bull like muscle can) and Clyde (a walking talking Men's Health magazine). All three are at the low end of the economic food chain and spend their days scheming ways to make money.

First impressions of any theme are never a good guide. It's not how it looks, it's what you do with it that counts. I've noticed some people who had negative reactions to Full Energy have started to warm to the characters as they've seen what some of the best GoAnimators are doing with them.

Personally I'm a Robot Chicken fan so I wasn't put off by the Full Energy theme when I first saw it. The Trailer Park setting and the 'low rent' characters put this firmly in My Name is Earl territory (another TV show I love).

Unlike others on GA I didn't rip a hillbilly sounding voice track from somewhere to adapt the theme to, I went straight for an original idea in my usual style of speech bubbles and a music backing track to fill the silence.

The premise I started with was that Dave (the ken doll character) would be relating some unbelievable story that played on the fact that he's not as good looking as he thinks he is. At the time I didn't know what but when I came up with the line 'girls are lining up to get to you' it all started to make sense. Why wouldn't Dave think he was good looking enough to be a Male Escort!

I'll let my animation, below, speak for its self.

The Ladies Man by etourist

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

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

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

Glif (Alpha) - Make Your Own Tiny AI Powered Niche Image Generator Apps

I first heard about Glif through a YouTube video that mentioned you could get access to Flux Pro (the latest 'game changer AI' generative image model) through the site for free. While I had a vague notion from the video of what Glif was, I wasn't expecting it to be so easy to get started with, and so good with my very first results. Glif is an easy to use, low-code platform for creating tiny AI-powered generators called Glifs. While that may not sound inspiring, what Glifs allow you to do is create a tiny app that niches down to a specific type of AI generation that the user modifies with their own inputs. The best way to really understand is with an example. My First Glif I've recently been using VivaGo's AI platform (free and unlimited at the time of writing) to consistently generate full body characters in a front facing T-Pose that I can rig as front facing characters in Cartoon Animator. Unfortunately it can be a bit hit or miss maintaining the T-Pose part

Krita AI Diffusion - Generative Image AI For Krita is Seriously Useful, Powerful and Free (If You Can Install it Locally)

Generative AI sequence of a woman in a business suit. From sketch to refined image using Krita AI Diffusion - by TET G enerative image AI, where you describe an image with a text prompt to an Artificial Intelligence model and it produces a new image based on your prompt, is gaining a strong hold as a tool for many artists. Krita AI Diffusion brings generative AI image tools right into your favourite free and opensource, graphics editor, Krita. Not only that, if you have a computer with decent specs (and at least 10GB of hard drive space), Krita AI Diffusion is completely free. What If I Don't Have a Powerful Computer? If you're in my situation, with a computer that was around before anyone in the mainstream had even heard of generative AI, you can still access Krita AI Diffusion for free, using a cloud based AI server, Interstice and 300 tokens, to get you started. Once your initial tokens run out, purchase 5000 more for 10€ (approx US$11.00). Tokens never expire. I would

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$

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

Review: Headshot Plugin for Reallusion's Character Creator 3

Headshot for CC3. Quite possibly the best 3D Avatar I've made of myself in any 3D application. Creating a realistic 3D human avatar is a whole lot easier with Reallusion's new Headshot Plugin for Character Creator 3. The plugin is an AI powered extension that can generate 3D digital humans from one photo. Which sounds like an amazing proposition but, in practice, if you're trying to achieve a specific likeness to an actual person, Headshot will give you an excellent base to work from. Headshot has two modes, Auto and Pro. Auto Mode Auto is well worth a try if you have an ideal photo of a front facing person that is properly lit and posed to Headshot's optimum requirements. It's also the only mode that will take a crack at generating a hair model. I grabbed an image of Harrison Ford, dragged it into Headshot without changing any of the default settings (other than specifying 'male' and selecting an 'old male' setting) and this is what I

Animation and Video Life

Search This Blog