Skip to main content

GoAnimate's Bring on the Noise Contest

Between December 2010 and March 2011 GoAnimate ran their Bring on the Noise contest in partnership with the Tribe of Noise indie music sharing web site. Animators could choose from a selection of about 15 songs and make an animated music video for their favorite.

You could enter as many times as you like. I managed to create two entries, the second of which you can see at the bottom of my post about Episode 1, Part 3 of Bat Storm: Financial Crisis which didn't get the required number of Facebook Likes to be considered a valid entry in the competition.

My first entry, below, not only made the cut it was the first runner up in the competition (effectively second place). As well it was the most viewed and the most recommended of all entries by the close of the competition.

Re-animatrix: 'Afghan Sands' by Stoneye by etourist on GoAnimate


Obviously my video is inspired by the closing battle in The Matrix: Revolutions but it wasn't the music that prompted me to go in that direction. In fact this animation did not start out to be a music video at all. It's beginnings were in my GoAnimate forum post, You Can't Do That on GoAnimate Challenge where Mr Holiday (who has since changed his screen name to Gangster Fart) wrote:


As you can see in my response I took up the challenge and set myself the task of achieving it with GoAnimate only props and characters.

Initially I was going to use GoAnimate's stick figure theme because those characters already have a Matrix style leap as one of their fight actions. I even made a start using some figures I created to look like Bat Storm and the Jokester (see image right).

I spent a lot of time with the stick figure version trying to work out how many steps were needed to spin the characters fluently through 360 degrees and how to hide the point where the characters have to flip.

One thing I discovered was that the moment I flipped the jumping character it reset their jump to the pre jump position, making that nice Matrix jump action virtually useless. Looking back I can see how I could solve this problem but at the time it was one of the catalysts for making me switch to the Lil' Peepz theme.

The other reason was that Lil' Peepz had just been given new fighting and gun using action packs that I thought would be great to feature in a Matrix style animation. So off I went to design my Neo and Agent Smith in the Lil' Peepz character creator.

To cut a long story short, the 360 degree spin I created requires just four GoAnimate Scenes to do the full spin. To help you understand how it all comes together look at the diagram below:

The diagram shows the scene slightly from above at the point where agent Smith has just jumped and frozen in mid air. The circles on the ground represent the space in which everything will spin through 360 degrees. The axis are labeled like a clock face with 12 at the top, the 3 on the right, 6 at the bottom and 9 on the left.

Over four scenes you have to move each object to the next axis in a quarter circle motion (add a control point or two to your slide movement) following a clockwise rotation (as indicated by the arrow line A). For example, Neo is standing on the 9 axis. By the next scene he needs to be on the 12 axis at about the same position he is standing on the 9 axis.

Things to keep in mind include perspective. Anything moving away from the viewer will get slightly smaller (i.e. anything moving towards the 12 axis). Anything moving towards the viewer will get slightly bigger (i.e. anything moving towards the 6 axis).

Characters crossing over the 6 or the 12 axis will need to be flipped in the next scene. Seeing the flip spoils the effect some what, which is why the scene includes two trees that rotate in front of viewer, hiding the flip. The trees also help to make the scene seem more like a real environment. The trees should move in quarter turns just like the characters.

The city line on the horizon should scroll/slide to the right (as indicated by arrow B) if the characters are spinning in a clockwise direction (it should move left for anti-clockwise). You will need to repeat the city scape prop so it forms a continuous, unbroken line of buildings through the whole spin. This will give the impression that the characters are surrounded by buildings - as if they're in a park in the middle of the city.

Note that the buildings are quite far away so they will move much slower than the characters. I used the default slide length of 75 pixels in my animation.

The whole effect can be helped by framing the scene tightly on just the characters using the CUT tool - that way the trees passing in front of the camera are less noticeable and seem more realistic.

It's a complex scene to set up and not that easy to explain clearly but hopefully you get the idea. If you look at the animation you'll see the man hole cover prop (i.e. the large grey circle I use on the ground in the animation) from the Lil' Peepz theme is a good substitute for the guidelines in my diagram above.

After all the hard work of trying to do the 360 spin using only GoAnimate props and characters it seemed a shame to release the animation with just that one move. GoAnimate had released its fighting and gun action packs so I decided to extend the fight scenes and add a music track.

I'd already heard the Afghan Sands music track by Stoneye, which other animators were associating with war and the Middle East for obvious reasons, but to me it felt like the faced paced music that I could picture being part of a film like the Matrix. Some people said it didn't suit but I think it does, given the Matrix is very much about a war and has plenty of Middle Eastern and Asian influences in its design and style.

Since the 360 spin played with perspective I expanded on that quite a bit to make my environment seem larger. Hence there was a lot of shrinking of props to create different camera angles and illusions of height and distance.

The closing tag line of "Clearly these two are not the One" was something I came up with because the end really needed some kind of statement after the two characters collide and vanish in a cloud of flames. Something to explain why I ended it where I did.

I never expected this animation to do as well as it did. Some people went so far as to say it would win the competition - quite a big call since I released it in December and there was plenty of time for someone to do something even more impressive before March.

Had the competition been about the most views I would've just made it but as it was a judged competition it turns out the second most viewed video won it - and deservedly so since that actually was a very creative music video and not just an extended fight video. The winning video is below...

Alice TERMINA by TOUJOURS on GoAnimate

Popular posts from this blog

Using Avatar Maker with Cartoon Animator - Free Vector Cartoon Avatar Creator with Four Art Styles

I'm always on the lookout for cartoon avatar makers of any kind, whether it be ones that 'cartoonify' your photo, or ones that let you build a cartoon likeness from a library of individual features.  Free Avatar Maker  falls into the latter category and can be used for making head and shoulder cartoon avatars. While it doesn't have an extensive library of character features (you may struggle to get a good likeness), uniquely it will make your avatar in four different art styles concurrently, allowing you to save the one you like most, or even all four.  I wasn't overly impressed how my TET avatar looked in the first two styles, but style three is quite possibly the coolest looking version of my avatar I've ever seen in a third party avatar creator. It's a very contemporary style. Style four, line art, is also not too bad. Avatar Maker's User Interface. Switch between the four different art styles shown across the top at any time. I particularly like the

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

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

Reallusion Releases Cartoon Animator 5 - One Version, More Features, Lower Price!

If you're serious about producing 2D animation as quickly as possible, while still achieving professional results, Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 makes the most compelling case yet as your animation studio/tool of choice. Cartoon Animator's point of difference has always been its ease of use and accelerated workflow. Creating fast, 2D animation using puppet, bone rigged based characters and props, on a stage with 3D depth for easy scene parallax effects. As it has developed Reallusion has incorporated more advanced features like motion capture for both face and body as well as being able to export scenes to post production tools like After Effects with the addition of plugins. After moving away from Flash based vector image support for a few years, Reallusion is back with full .SVG (scalable vector graphics) support for resolution independent graphics. They've also added Spring Dynamic physics and Full Form Deformation tools, both of which make it ridiculously easy t

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

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