Men In Black - Part 4

It's been several months since episode 3 of my Men In Black series staring Barack Obama and AKON but finally the two MIB Agents are back and hot on the trail of wanna be Evil Genius, Rashy (the sock monkey) - or are they?

If you haven't seen the previous episodes then I strongly urge you to take the time to watch them otherwise the current episode may not make a lot of sense. You can either click the links in the GoAnimate player below to view each episode on GoAnimate or, if you'd like to read my background notes, then click the following links, Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 3 to take you to each animations corresponding blog post.

MIB - Part 4 by etourist

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

As with previous episodes, when I started I had no idea where the story would end up. Episode 3 ended with Rashy about to set his special robot agent onto Bush and Cheney with Barack and AKON heading out to track Rashy down.

I did know that I wanted to put more action into this episode. A lot of my animations tend to involve characters in verbal exchanges but the MIB films that this series parodies isn't all talk. It was definitely time for some action.

In the opening scene I was really struggling for a logical location for Bush and Cheney to be, using the existing backgrounds on GoAnimate. Standing outside the White house seemed logical but why? Then I thought who better to give guided tours of the White house than the ex-administration. Unlikely but kind of funny too.

Observant viewers will notice the 'tourists' are all characters from GoAnimate's I'm a Mac, I'm a PC parody ads (because I knew the PC guy had a really good action where he goes flying after being kicked - useful in 'explosive' situations).

Note that when I started this series many of the props and effects that appear in this episode didn't exist as GoAnimate didn't have the Stick Man theme (where those beams of light both the Robot Agent and Alien Bush shoot at each other come from) or the Custom World backgrounds (the subway station, Agent Roy's Office and the Interrogation room). This is most evident in episode 2 where Bush turns the first MIB Agent to 'Poo' using a very poorly made prop from the GoA community.

In the second scene of episode 4 when we first see Barack and AKON there is a wide shot in which you can just see Rashy in the bottom left corner of the frame. This was meant to be a one off, throw away a joke for Barack's line about Rashy being a 'sneaky little monkey' but then in the subway scene I thought, why not put Rashy in the background again?

However in doing that it gave the impression that perhaps Rashy was following Barack and AKON when in fact he isn't - well not really.

In the last scene with AKON where he reports in that they haven't seen Rashy all day it was just too good an opportunity to have Rashy walk across that scene in the background. It wasn't like I planned it that way. Fortunately there was good reason for Rashy to be in the exact same location as Barack and AKON, with the destroyed Robot - so it worked well in the end.

I really like that Rashy is making no attempt to hide himself. It reinforces the idea that he's not actually trailing the two agents - they just happen to going to the same place and the agents just didn't notice him.

Unfortunately up to that point nothing in episode 4 really advances the storyline. It's all just a bit of a chase with no one being successful. Rashy doesn't kill Bush and Cheney. The Agents don't locate Rashy. I needed something to hook people into episode 5.

Part way through making episode 4 I discovered the Interrogation room background and knew I'd be using it at some point. Having brought Rashy's Dad into the story in episode 3 it occurred to me Rashy already had a former arch nemesis in the form of his brother SuperRica. Rashy was always playing some very cruel tricks on SuperRica so who better to haul in for questioning.

However brothers are still brothers so SuperRica isn't going to just rat out on Rashy that easily. You'll have to wait until episode 5 to see if SuperRica will crack.

I don't think there's anything else to say about this episode other than a side note about the joke relating to AKON looking like he needs to pee when he's on the phone. Unfortunately for most of AKON's body actions he dances - including talking on his cell phone. Obviously in this series he needs to use the phone a lot and it just looks odd that he's dancing whilst talking - I felt it needed some explanation.

It's kind of a shame really that all the characters in AKON's theme are mostly designed to dance along with AKON's music. They're some of the best drawn characters on GoAnimate. If they had more non dancing actions (and the whole theme wasn't so restricted in terms of not being able to add custom audio or mix the characters with other themes) I think people would have used them a whole lot more.

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

Artbreeder - Using AI created Character and Background Content in your Animations

A selection of User/AI generated images from Artbreeder. If you're looking for an endless supply of 2D character and background images for your animations then Artbreeder , an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) that generates image mash-ups you can tweak as much as you like, could be the ultimate content library. What is Artbreeder? Artbreeder is free to use though there are various paid plans, that give you additional features, such as higher resolution download images or more settings to play with. All images created on the site are Public Domain (CC0 License) and can be used in commercial projects. Using Artbreeder's online app you can generate head shot portraits, full body characters, landscapes, and other scenes simply by choosing two or more existing images to mash together then, using a series of sliders, to select which traits from each image you wish to lean toward in the final image. Photo Comparison - Top is my original uploaded photo. Bottom is Artbreeder's ap

Jarrad Wright, The Big Lez Show - Who Would've thought Animating with MS Paint Could Take You So Far?

A friend of mine recommended I should check out The Big Lez Show after I mentioned to him I make animations for living. He said the show's creator, Australian animator, Jarrad Wright , just makes episodes from his home using MS Paint. Somewhat shamefully I hadn't heard of The Big Lez Show, but the fact that it was being made with MS Paint absolutely hooked me into checking out. If you've never heard or seen the show then you, like I was, are probably thinking how good could it be? MS Paint has kind of a cult following of hardcore animators but no one would use it as their primary animation tool on a series, right? WARNING - before going any further, you need to know The Big Lez Show and its humor contains some pretty strong language. By strong I mean it's peppered very liberally with the 'F' and 'C' words and is very every day Aussie, blue collar speak. Unapologetically, all of that, is part of why it's so good. There's a good chance you've

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Eric W. Schwartz: Cartoonist, Animator and Amiga Die Hard

July 1992 Edition, CU Amiga Featuring Amy the Squirrel. American Cartoonist, Eric W. Schwartz , (whose unofficial Amiga Icon, Amy the Squirrel, is pictured on the July 92 edition of CU Amiga cover on the right) is my only real animation hero. Sure there are the big names like Disney , Chuck Jones , Tex Avery and even Preston Blair whose influences can all be seen in my own cartoons but Eric did what none of the others could. He showed that really great 2D computer animation was within my reach with little more than an Amiga Computer , a copy of Deluxe Paint and Moviesetter . This was at a time when computer based animation was in its infancy (outside of computer game animation) and Flash was something that lights did. There were many great Amiga artists but Eric was really the only one consistently making very funny, traditional style animations. His humor and drawing style is heavily influenced by classic Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons but he managed to build on this,

Eleven Mostly Free Comic Book/Strip Resources For Your Next Motion Comic

Created with Lywi.com Comic Maker. One really exciting use for Cartoon Animator and other animation software is to assist in the production of creating motion comics. If you're not familiar with motion comics just think of them as a kind of video comic book that typically features (but not always) all of the dialogue in each panel read by voice actors along with limited animation to make the still images more dynamic and visually interesting. Below is a demonstration motion comic I made many years ago when I reviewed Smith Micro's Motion Artist software (which has since been discontinued but, if you can find a copy, its entire purpose was to create motion comics and other motion graphics). Follow the link to the review if you want to see how this was made. The great thing about motion comics is that they're much easier to animate than an animated cartoon short. Often much of the animation will be moving a a static image of a character, panning the camera across a scene cre

Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3. I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996. It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it. But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm ). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs . Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures , and Toon Hair , designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker. The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that w

Animation and Video Life

Search This Blog