Skip to main content

Men in Black - Part 5

Mid last year I finally concluded my Men In Black series staring Barack Obama and AKON, the parody series I started way back in December of 2008 - and boy had things changed at GoAnimate by August of 2010 when Part 5 was finally released!

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. Click the following links, Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3 and Episode 4 to take you to each animations corresponding blog post.

I was lucky to have started Part 5 before all the major changes came in at GoAnimate with the introduction of Premium Goplus+ accounts because one change was that AKON's theme vanished from public access. Even for Goplus+ members.

Fortunately, if you already had an AKON animation in draft or previously published, all the themes components would still show up in the GoAnimate studio. I think this is still the case too. If you copy an old AKON animation that you've made and rename it, you can still make new AKON videos.

I don't know why the theme has vanished but I really wish GoAnimate would bring it back. As I've said previously the characters within it are some of the best drawn on GoAnimate.

Moving on to the final part 5 episode, I knew this was going to be the conclusion. It had been many months since part 4 and I just didn't want to drag out this series any longer.

Given my writing style of making up the story as I go I'm pretty proud of just how well everything comes together in an ending that is completely satisfying yet, like all great endings suggests this may not be the end.

MIB - Part 5 by etourist

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

I remember when I made this, the opening scene of Rashy flying down from space I completed fairly soon after part 4 and then I got really stuck. I didn't know what Rashy's lair really looked like or how I'd get Agent A and Barack onto Rashy's trail.

All I knew is that I had Super Rica refusing to rat out Rashy at the end of episode 4. Rashy was still mad at Bush and Cheney and that the trick alien glasses hand controller I set up way back in episode 1 still hadn't been put to good use. All of this kept me stuck for months - which is why these characters made a special appearance in Moonlighting - TET's New PA to complain about the hold up on their series.

Sometimes to get out of writer's block with a comedy you just have to drop a piano from a great height and see how the characters react. In this case, my Piano was Brittany Spears crashing a Ferrari into Rashy's flying saucer. It's a little random but it worked in with the idea that any human could be an alien in disguise (just like Bush and Cheney) and Britney did have a thing for accidentally crashing her car into things at the time.

This got things moving with Barack and Agent A and it took George and Cheney out of the story in a natural conclusion that meant they didn't need to be saved from Rashy.

Also this episode continues the whole joke of Agent A dancing every time he uses the phone. It's really the one thing Barack has over Agent A that he knows will annoy him.

In previous episodes I'd already established Rashy as a master of disguise - even though he never disguises himself at all. I also established that Barack could see through Rashy's disguises way back in episode 2. Both points provided some great comedy in the chase into the subway where Rashy finally gets to use that trick controller to lose himself in the crowd - the first time you could say he actually does disguise himself.

This segwayed nicely back to the interrogation room where Roy and Agent K are trying to break Super Rica into revealing Rashy's lair.

Once Barack and Agent A are told of Rashy's lair it's a great opportunity to once again point out the two agents are walking everywhere. I'm noting it here because I use almost the same running joke in my later Bat Storm: Financial Crisis series. Who said a good joke can't be recycled!

Rashy's lair was an interesting development. In episode 3 I established Rashy had a lair with a dungeon like room where we first see his new, improved killer robot. At the time I hadn't thought about what the exterior of his lair might look like. Then I had a brain wave of continuing to self reference my other animations - as MIB does by bringing Rashy into it in the first place.

Thus Rashy's lair became the same castle complete with the same Witch that I used in my earlier series, How to get views the Evil Genius way (episode 2). The premise of that episode was that the Witch had purchased a flying monkey army (which all looked like Rashy) with monkeys that couldn't actually fly due to their wings being fake.

Rashy kind of takes over her lair (because he's just that resourceful) but when MIB track him down the Witch tricks Rashy into using the wings to fly away. Stroke of genius - if I do say so myself.

This meant I could recreate my favorite scene from the How to get views episode - a monkey jumping straight out the tower window only to discover the wings don't work - and have Rashy just drop into Barack and Agent A's hands - literally. No need for any big confrontation or final battle - and it works beautifully because it's funny and completely logical.

From there it was easy to tie up the loose end of what happens to Rashy since the MIB movies, which this series parodies, established the whole memory erasing ability that MIB has.

I like that the whole script comes full circle for Rashy and he's back in his room where his megalomania began way back in The Boss of Everything.

To sum up the whole series, this my first full length script for any animation. That is, something that tells a complete story with plot twist and turns untill finally everything is brought together in a satisfying conclusion. I learnt so much constructing the story that I later used when creating the first episode of Bat Storm. It's a body of work that I'm most proud of.

Popular posts from this blog

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

Should You Buy or Upgrade to MOHO 13? *Spoiler* Yes. Yes You Should!

MOHO 13's New Character Set. Smith Micro released MOHO 13 , their all in one, 2D animation studio, this week. The question is should you buy or upgrade to the latest version? Obviously I've already spoiled this in the title, so the actual question is why do I think you should buy or upgrade? To be clear, I'm only talking about MOHO 13 Pro. If you're considering MOHO 13 Debut be aware that you're missing out on some of the new features, and a lot of existing features that are only available in the Pro version. Debut is fine if the budget doesn't stretch to Pro, but, if you never want to be disappointed about not having a feature, it's Pro or nothing! The other thing I need to be transparent about is I'm not, by any stretch, a frequent MOHO user/animator. However I took the time to learn MOHO 12 Pro fairly extensively, blogging about my process and sorting out 104 free MOHO training videos into a logical viewing order in the process. I think I ha

TimeBolt: Fast Video Editing for Anyone Creating Online Courses, Podcasts, or Vlogs.

I resisted making tutorial videos for a long time because I don't like editing. Specifically I don't like editing me teaching as I step students through a process during a screen record. I have a tendency to insert long pauses not just in the middle of sentences but between multiple words in the middle of sentences as my pace matches what I'm doing onscreen. This makes for very long and very slow paced video tutorials. To counteract this I have to edit out all the pauses. This can take hours, or even days on particularly long tutorials. For example, when I created my main course, The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator , I literally injured the thumb on my right hand, operating my mouse, as I spent weeks taking out all my pauses (seriously, I had to wear a thumb brace for a few weeks to fix the pain). Recently I came across TimeBolt , a very affordable, fast editing application with the featured purpose of removing all the pauses from your video (and even

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

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

Review: CrazyTalk Animator 3 vs Moho Studio Pro 12

Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Smith Micro's Moho Studio Pro 12. Which of these 2D animation applications is right for you? Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a strong supporter, and fairly proficient user of CrazyTalk Animator since version 1. It's a great piece of software for producing 2D animations from purchased content quickly and, with version 3, is easier than ever to create animations from your own art. Lesser known is that I first purchased Moho Studio Pro 12 (then known as Anime Studio Pro 9) back in October of 2012 and have been upgrading it to the latest version ever since because I believed in it as an application for creating great 2D animation to TV quality standard. As such, it's a much more complex application than CTA3 that I only got around to learning properly late last year. I'm still in the process of blogging my progress . Despite this I feel I've learned enough of Moho to compare it to CTA3 to help you determ

Creating a G3-360 Head From a Single Photo in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator

Source Photo from Generated Photos . Ever since Reallusion introduced the G3-360 Character Head into Cartoon Animator 4 I've wanted to see if their 360 Head Creator tool could be used to create an animated head using a photo. Part of the reason I've never given this a shot, until now, is that I just assumed it would be difficult, and require a lot of photo editing to blend out the sprite edges. It turns out, creating a photographic G3-360 head is not that much more difficult than creating a cartoon head, and can be done using a single photographic image using my own G3-360 head rigging system . While this article isn't intended to be a full tutorial, I'll run through the basic steps of how I achieved my photographic G3-360 head, shown in the comparison below, of a Cartoon Animator Morph-based head on the left, and my G3-360 head on the right. Pros and Cons Cartoon Animator's morph-based head system is ideal for animating photographic faces. It uses a semi 3D wire me