TET Animation Project Update for 2020

TET Animation Updates.

It's the start of a new year which means it's a great time to run down my own personal animation project plans for this year.

Patreon

Before the end of January I hope to be launching my Patreon Membership Account. I've been largely reluctant to go the Patreon route for funding my animated projects but it appears to be the best way to fund projects that only the smallest of audiences have any interest in.

While the majority of the work on my animated projects will still be done by me, the main goal of the Patreon is to raise funds to pay for voice artists. I don't have the vocal range to voice all of my characters. Voice changers and Text to Speech Apps aren't at a quality that sounds professional, and I want my productions to be elevated in a way that only real voice actors can.

As much as I have friends who would gladly volunteer time to voice characters, that's not a reliable system, as people get busy, and the quality of recording can vary a lot depending on recording equipment available. I'd much rather pay someone who voice acts for a living and is excited to bring my characters to life.

Watch out for the launch of my Patreon and, if you do have an interest in seeing more of my animations, please consider becoming a Patreon. There will be Patreon only benefits, which I will detail when I"m set to launch.

Upcoming Projects

Bat Storm

Bat Storm, created in iClone, is going to be my major animation project this year. It is specifically for this project that I'm launching my Patreon (though not limited to just this project). Bat Storm has a lot of characters in just the main cast alone, before even thinking about the supporting cast. I really want his stories to be a showcase of my animation work, and having access to real voice artists is a MUST.

Bat Storm, Bat Flash, and Senior Detective Smith.
Created with Reallusion's CC3 and iClone.

I've previously shown Bat Storm's character design. Since then I've created Bat Flash and Detective Smith (neither of whom I have any chance of being able to voice myself).

I think the characters look really good and they deserve to have quality voices actors bringing them to life.

While I've yet to write a complete new script for Bat Storm's next adventure I'm thinking very hard about starting with his unfinished adventure from back in his GoAnimate days called, Pain.

Other Animated Shorts

As much as I've long been interested in the 3D pixar style animation I'm using for Bat Storm, my first love is 2D animation, because all my original cartoon characters are 2D drawings.

This year I want to continue making 2D animated shorts with Cartoon Animator 4, some with my own characters but also quite a few with the characters I've bought through Reallusion's content stores and other places.

There's nothing more satisfying than having a funny idea for an animated short and putting it together as quickly as possible with whatever content you have. That's how my Water Valet animations came about, and I'd like to continue with that kind of production.

Despite the goal being quick animated shorts, I'd still like to raise the production quality with professional voice actors, so some of my Patreon funds will go towards these.

Reallusion Marketplace Store

I don't promote it a lot but I do have a Reallusion Marketplace Store. I don't want to get too ambitious and say I'll be making a lot more characters this year, but I am looking to moving my focus back to this store and stocking it with more of my original content.

Even though I'm not an official Reallusion Content Developer, I do earn a lot of DA points (basically money in the marketplace) that comes in very handy for buying additional content used in my animations.

For example, did you know a lot of the items sold in bundle packs in the Reallusion Content store can be purchased individually through the Reallusion Marketplace with DA points. That's how I purchased Bat Storm's Assassin Pack cape... as an individual item rather than having to buy the whole Assassin's pack.

---o ---o--- o---

That's it for 2020. I do have a lot of past projects, mentioned previously in this blog, that have kind of fallen by the wayside but have not necessarily been forgotten entirely. I will try to get back to them and finish them off.

However, this year, I feel it's time to focus my efforts a little more to one main project (Bat Storm) and a few smaller side projects for whenever I need a bit of a recharge with something different.

Remember that my Patreon is coming. I will definitely let you know when it launches and give you a full run down on the Patreon only benefits. I really do want you to get something worthwhile out of supporting me financially.

If you do have any thoughts for what kind of benefits I could offer that would get you to sign up please let me know in the comments below.

Featured Animator: Christian Haynes - 'Zack In Time' An Original, Independent, Animated Series on the Rise

Christian Haynes - Zack In Time. If you've ever wanted to create an animated TV series staring your own original characters and stories then Los Angeles based writer, director, and animator, Christian Haynes is taking those next steps of putting together a team, developing a pitch/trailer for their series, Zack In Time. Featuring professional studio quality animation, they hope the show will get picked up by an animation studio for an official series. The path he and his team are taking is one you could easily follow as they deal with real life commitments, and building a following on Instagram and Tik-Tok showcasing their work behind the scenes. TET: Tell me a little about yourself. Who you are, and why you started animating? My name is Christian Haynes and I've loved animation ever since I was a kid. I would constantly be drawing cartoon characters from TV shows and movies and making my own little homemade comic strips. As I got older, I became a lot more interested in st

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

Shotcut - Free Open Source Video Editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux

Shotcut Open Source Video Editor. I've been on the hunt for a while now for the best, free, open source, video editing application out there. In Shotcut , by Meltytech , which has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, I think I may have found a real front runner. This won't be a feature filled review, rather it will be my first impressions after having used Shotcut on a few of my YouTube videos so far. One of my key criteria for a video editor is the ability to import any video format directly into the project. This may seem like an odd focus initially but having convert video to something your video editor can use is annoyingly time consuming, and it creates a new generation of footage, potentially with a loss in quality if you don't really know much about video format specs (that's this guy right here!). Shotcut will happily work with my OBS recordings (.FLV), and .MOV, .MP4 files that I get from two different cameras. Not only that but Shotcut doesn't hold me up

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,

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

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

Review: Headshot Plugin for Reallusion's Character Creator 3

Headshot for CC3. Quite possibly the best 3D Avatar I've made of myself in any 3D application. Creating a realistic 3D human avatar is a whole lot easier with Reallusion's new Headshot Plugin for Character Creator 3. The plugin is an AI powered extension that can generate 3D digital humans from one photo. Which sounds like an amazing proposition but, in practice, if you're trying to achieve a specific likeness to an actual person, Headshot will give you an excellent base to work from. Headshot has two modes, Auto and Pro. Auto Mode Auto is well worth a try if you have an ideal photo of a front facing person that is properly lit and posed to Headshot's optimum requirements. It's also the only mode that will take a crack at generating a hair model. I grabbed an image of Harrison Ford, dragged it into Headshot without changing any of the default settings (other than specifying 'male' and selecting an 'old male' setting) and this is what I

Animation and Video Life

Search This Blog