Skip to main content

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Part 1) on GoAnimate

In late January of 2012 I was looking around for ideas to create an epic animated music video on GoAnimate that told a story of a battle against the odds.

Inspiration...

This came about as a result of re-viewing, yet again,  one of my favorite GoAnimations of all time created by GoAnimator, Tripfold, called The Jet Set Concussion (The Blueberry Fiz Contention 2).

I've embeded it below. It still stands up as a great GoAnimation even now.

The Jet Set Concussion by Tripfold on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate.

It's an old animation (published in October of 2009) that tells a love story of our hero of sorts in the face of aliens hell bent on destroying the world.

I like it because of how it tells the story with no dialogue. How it uses music to set the pace of the action and that it features plenty of detail and subtle animation techniques, not really seen on GoAnimate at the time (such as paralax movement of objects to give a feeling of depth). Then there is just the epic-ness of it all.

I wanted to do something along those lines so began trawling YouTube for a suitable song. Something that inspired 'epic-ness'.

In late 2011 GoAnimate's Chibi Ninja Theme and sword fighting action packs had been released and I'd yet to do anything with them. GoAnimator, Chaostoon, had had a huge success with his Swords and the follow up Swords II animations. Both are excellent but, for me, didn't quite showcase the moves in the sword fighting action packs in the way I wanted to see them. (Though in hind sight, The first Swords actual sword fight is easily better than what I've achieved in my Yoshimi animation - more on that later).

I first heard of the band The Flaming Lips when they released one of their most successful singles to date, She Don't use Jelly in 1993. It brought much attention to their quirky, alternative and experimental music.

I don't think I've ever bought any of their music but even so, their biggest songs have stuck them in my head as a band that's always done things differently. I was looking for their 1993 hit with a view to perhaps using some of it in my animation  (at that point my animation was going to feature more than one song).

Whilst searching Youtube I came across their 2002 song, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Part 1) from the album of the same name. I had heard it before, many years ago, but seeing the title alone again was enough to make me think this is the perfect song for GoAnimate's Chibi Ninja theme.

If you read through the comments of the Youtube clip at the link above you soon discover there's some contention as to what the song is about.

The most common theory is that the song is a metaphor for a young girl fighting cancer - the pink robots representing cancer cells in her system. However according to the albums Wikipedia page this is actually the story line for a planned Broadway musical (announced in March 2007) based on the album - as described by the band's lead singer, Wayne Coyne:
There's the real world and then there's this fantastical world. This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of cancer. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It's almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that.
I haven't been able to find anywhere online where Wayne Coyne confirms this is also the original story of the song. If you listen to the lyrics the metaphor doesn't quite work in my opinion.

Never the less I based my idea for my animated music video of the song on this very concept, though my pink robots simply represent the girls illness, which isn't necessarily cancer. Below is the final result.


Behind the Scenes...

As you can see the clip makes considerable use of several of the Simple Perspective techniques I recently wrote tutorials about in this blog.  It also uses GoAnimate's new scene transitions to cross fade between scenes and the new Enter/Exit feature to fade in and out individual characters.

One thing that only GoAnimators, who are really familiar with the Comedy World theme, might notice is the new camera view of the hospital bed background. I created it initially for variation but it came in useful for having the little Yoshimi fly out the window at the end.

In terms of creating the story, I did actually storyboard about the first minute of this animation because I was having a hard time coming up with ideas directly in the studio - which is how I usually work.

You can see my storyboard below which should give you a sense of how rough my storyboards are.

Yoshimi Story board - click to enlarge.

If you look at the first few panels of my storyboard you can see there's no nurse sitting next to the bed. As I put the animation its self together I added the nurse in and made it some-what ambiguous as to whether Yoshimi is the sick girl in the bed or the nurse.

The girl's father was also an addition because I needed different things to occur each time we came back to the hospital. I didn't want to keep coming back to a bed with a girl sleeping. As the story evolved it was clear the video needed to end with the girl waking up after Yoshimi successfully destroys all the robots.

Choreographing Sword Fights...

I like to think I'm really good at animating sword fights but in reality I don't think I"m all that cut out for it. Not with GoAnimate at least. This animation gave me a new appreciation for Chaostoon's Swords animation. The sword fight he choreographed in his first episode is closer to what I was hoping to achieve in Yoshimi than what I did.

To be fair on myself, it's not easy to create a sword fight where one character is considerably larger than the other. It makes it even harder to match up the preset attack and defend actions. That aside I was starting to loose patience with getting the moves I wanted to animate looking like they were actually hitting their targets.

That's why Yoshimi knocks out the first four robots relatively easily and cleans up the last one by throwing her sword. You really do need a lot of patience to do a good fight animation really well.


I think I've covered all the main things behind the scenes. It's not quite the epic animation I wanted to make but it's a step closer to doing something nearly as awesome as The Jet Set Concussion.

Comments

  1. Do you remember the Blueberry Fizz Contention? Do you remember the song that went with it?

    It's been stuck in my head for years and I'll never get it.
    If you ever read this. Email me, please. I need to find out what it was and its nowhere on the Internet anymore :-(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "The Jetset Concussion" was subtitled as 'The Blueberry Fizz Contention 2" so presumably we're talking about the same video. If so I was obsessed with it partially for the same reason, the songs, which were:

      The Gap in My Education - lambchop
      Happily Ever After - the rosebuds

      It's a shame the animation is nowhere on the internet anymore. It was so well done.

      Delete
    2. Thank you for getting back to me. That's insane. However you've got The Jet Set Concussion songs there.
      I remember it on The Blueberry Fizz as that was my favourite video as a kid because of that song.
      It was kind of a dramatic song, with airy vocals.
      I literally can't make out the words as I' m going off a memory from years ago when the site was once Go!Animate.

      Least there's someone out there who remembers this obscure video.

      Get in touch once again. I remember your account on that site too, used to love your videos and send you messages wantinh your input on my animations back in the day.

      Delete
  2. Do you remember The Blueberry Fizz Contention 1. You listed the songs for the Jet Set Conclusion. I am once again looking everywhere for this song. If you remember it and are notified of this comment, please deep dive. Remember its not the second Blueberry Fizz sequel. It's the first one Tripfold done. If you remember the song and have it, please detail it. I have had this song in my head for years and cannot for the life of me find it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry I really can't help. I've also looked for these videos and songs and gotten nowhere. The creator of the videos seems to have vanished and never posted the videos anywhere else.

      Delete

Post a Comment

This blog is monitored by a real human. Generic or unrelated spam comments with links to sites of dubious relativity may be DELETED.

I welcome, read, and respond to genuine comments relating to each post. If your comment isn't that save me some time by not posting it.

Popular posts from this blog

Eight 2D Animation Apps For Your Phone or Tablet Mobile Device

M obile productivity apps have become so capable that they can be great alternatives to their PC/MAC equivalents or serve as great tools in their own right when you're away from your desk. While some apps simply mimic their desktop counterparts, others offer well thought out, touch-friendly interfaces that are easier and more fun to use. Every so often I check out what's available for 2D animation for Android devices, since that's what I use, that can complement my workflow with Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5. Some may be available for Apple devices as well. Below I've listed six free (F) apps (with optional paid (P) upgrades) on the Google Play Store that you might want to explore. Some are just fun apps on their own while others may be useful as part of your workflow on bigger animation projects. Not all are exclusively animation apps and could be used on any production. JotterPad (F/P) The name JotterPad makes this sound like a notepad application but it's ...

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...

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List - 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 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). 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/se...

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...

OpenArt Versus Dzine: AI Consistent Character Training Compared

TET2d Avatar Image created with Dzine . R egular readers of Animation and Video Life will be familiar with my alter ego, 2D avatar character, TET, who is both the face of The Lazy Animator Cartoon Animator Tutorials, and is currently part of my Resident Dragon joke cartoon series. It is my goal to use him as an animated avatar for both my Lazy Animator video courses and my Cartoon Animator tutorials that you'll find on my @AnimLife YouTube channel . Unfortunately I don't have the time to animate him for every single project. Even with Cartoon Animator's time-saving workflow I wouldn't be able to produce animated content quick enough. Which is why advances in AI animation is something that is increasingly more interesting to me each day. Consistent Characters Before we get there I have to overcome one of the biggest hurdles in AI I've come across... reproducing my art style consistently. I don't want an approximation of my characters, I want my characters looki...

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...

XP-Pen Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Drawing Tablet Review - Portable and Robust Quality Ideal for Sketching on the Go!

XP-Pen's Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Tablet. I've been looking for a more portable drawing solution for a while to work with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A, 8 inch, Android tablet, which is why, when XP-Pen invited me to collaborate on an animation project, I asked about trying their Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Drawing Tablet . Does It Really Work With Android Devices? Having heard many of XP-Pen's mobile drawing displays could be connected to Android devices I, incorrectly, assumed wide compatibility. Unfortunately this isn't the case. There is a list of specific Android devices that work with XP-Pen's Pen Display tablets and none of them are any of the three Samsung devices I own. XP-Pen could definitely improve the compatibility of their displays with more Android devices if they're going to promote that as a feature (or make it more clear to check their device compatibility list before you buy). Also note the additional USB-C to USB-C video cable, needed to...