Man of Steel - Super Kent Returns to GoAnimate

The character of Super Kent was one of my first creations on GoAnimate way back in 2008, not long after joining the site. The basic premise of the character is that he is a parody of Clarke Kent with the sole purpose of trying to convince his boss at the Daily Planet that he really IS Superman.

Previously I created two comedy shorts, Super Kent and Super Kent Returns, both with the same format of Kent initially trying to convince his boss of his super powers without success. The boss then sends him to report on a breaking news story.

It wasn't a character I had any plans to return to any time soon as I felt I'd moved on from my early GoAnimate superhero parodies.

However TotallyEpicHD, the winner of my April TET Blog Contest, resurrected the character in his entry to my contest. Which inspired GoAnimator, gipsy, to make a flash version of Super Kent in his Super Suit. When I came across his post in GoAnimate's forum's I asked if he could create a flying action and a holding something above his head pose. Which he did.

That's how I ended up creating a new Super Kent episode, that follows the same format of the previous episodes, but this time Kent plans to tell everyone he is Superman at a specially organised press conference.

Custom Work

Other than gipsy's custom Super Kent character, those of you familiar with the Cartoon Classic's theme may have noticed that I added a custom beard to the Alvin character head.

The beard is actually a head prop. However if you add it to a character, the head will disappear being replaced with a floating beard.

In order to get the full head behind the beard I simply placed a copy of the character with the Alvin head behind the one that had the head replaced with the beard. So long as both characters are set to perform the same actions they move exactly in time.

Script

This one was pretty easy to write. Kent, being a journalist, goes to press events all the time. I felt it would be his next logical step to convince others that he's Superman in order to convince his boss.

I recently saw the movie Iron Man 3 which ends with Tony declaring he is Iron Man. This caused me to remember that Tony Stark had told the world he was Iron Man at a similar press event in the first Iron Man film.

By Iron Man 3 Tony has made a whole bunch of different Iron Man suits that all seem able to function completely autonomously. What if some of those suits were made to look like other superheroes?

Stark's seems to love the attention of being Iron Man so why wouldn't he enjoy even more attention by going around and announcing he's responsible for other superheroes too?

From there it didn't take much to set up the word play that would have you thinking Stark might back Kent up but makes his own announcement instead.

Voices

As noted in the credits, all the voices are mine. It's a little hard to gauge how successful they are because to me, they just all sound like me, however I am trying to vary my voice enough to act all my own characters. I know I need more practice. I hope I'm getting there.

I don't really plan to do another Super Kent episode. This was just a fun aside. Though I won't say never. Who knows, I may have another idea and the time for another small, fun side project with Kent.

Comments

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List 2019 - Animation and Video Life

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. 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$200.00 or less.
(In the case of a subscription service that&…

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 determine which …

Springboard - Fast Digital Storyboarding on a Budget

Storyboarding an animation is one of my least favorite parts of the creative process and yet it's also one of the most important after writing the script. It's where the planning of the visual representation of the script takes place.

The Problem....

I've struggled with storyboarding because I knew there had to be a better way than drawing tiny thumbnails on a sheet of paper with script and camera direction notes crammed underneath - an example of which can be found in my post for my music video animation, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. This method isn't exactly client friendly as my handwriting scrawls can become unreadable even to me over time.

The other technique I employed was using the storyboarding features of Celtx Script Writing Software. Celtx allows you to import your scanned thumbnails (or any digital image) into its storyboard where you can add text and camera direction into scrollable text boxes below each image - and never run out of room. I employed th…

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

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, creating something that was recognizably Eric's own style.

I've…

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

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 have more than enough insight to let you kno…

Voice All Your Own Animated Characters with Voice Changer

Voice Changer by AVSoft is real time voice manipulation software that can be used for a wide range of purposes including (according to their website); Voice-over and voice dubbing for audio/video clips, presentations, narrations, voice messages, voice mails, E-greeting cards, broadcasting, etc.; mimic the voice of any person, create animal sounds, change/replace/remove voices in songs, videos,etc.

I bought it for the specific purpose of changing my own voice, to extend my vocal range, for voicing characters in my own animations.
I was fortunate enough to get this software at a significant discount that made it difficult to refuse, given that I'd never tried it, or even heard of it before. I'm not sure if I would have bought it at the full price given that much of what it can do (for my needs) can also be done with the freeware audio program, Audacity.
Voice Changer is relatively easy to install and set up. Once installed simply change you default microphone to the installed AV…

Learn Moho Pro 12 Free Using SmithMicro's Own 104 Video Tutorials Sorted into a Logical Order of Progression

So you've bought Smith Micro's Moho Pro 12 along with the Moho, 10 hour, 104 Video Tutorials Add On pack so you can get learning right away... only you can't. For whatever reason, the video tutorials aren't sorted into any logical order of progression making them hard to follow.

Yeah, I've been there, only I've done what Smith Micro should have done and sorted all the video tutorials into a logical order of natural progression for you. That is, each tutorial builds upon what you learned in previous videos and you won't suddenly come up against some feature you've never used before, unless that feature is what the video tutorial is about.

Animation and Video Life

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