'One More Try...' A Spooky Halloween Skateboard Curse | Behind the Scenes on an Animated Ghost Story for Skateboarders

One of the biggest lies in skateboarding is saying you'll give a trick attempt 'one more try.' Inevitably it never is just 'one more try' and thus the Halloween skateboarders curse was born... this spooky story tells why you should never skateboard on Halloween!

Obviously this animated short was created for Halloween, based on an original script by me, and once again featuring the characters, props, and backgrounds from many Reallusion Developers in the Reallusion Marketplace.

Watch the full animated short below, then read on to see how it all came together.

'One More Try...' A Spooky Halloween Skateboard Curse | Animated Ghost Story for Skateboarders

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Behind the Animation

Inspiration and Characters

Halloween (October 31st) was the starting point. I initially bought Garry Pye's new Wibble Skateboarder to test a kickflip. Then I saw DexArt's Goop Mummy, which reminded me I already owned his Josh and Tara Skateboarders. I switched immediately to keep the art style consistent.

Any die-hard skater knows the phrase, "I'll give this trick one more try," right before quitting a session because they're so close. It's not a big stretch to see this as a potential curse: 'one more try for eternity' if muttered after nightfall on Halloween.

Script

I write scripts using JotterPad on my Android tablet. It supports Fountain script for automatic formatting, and is able to export a finished PDF script document for actors.

The story isn't complex; it's based on skateboarders climbing walls to skate unauthorized spots. This wall climb gave me natural space for conversational exposition before the characters actually see the Ghost Skater.

Then it was just following through, with Josh helping the Ghost skater land his triple flip.

Note: The final lightning flash and Tara's commentary on its randomness were ideas I came up with later, not in the original script.

Storyboard

Firoona Storyboard App.
Even though the storyboard is complete
a bug appears to be preventing my thumbnails
from displaying across the bottom.

Unlike my previous short, "Trash Panda," I did a full storyboard, choosing Firoona over Mooltik to avoid corruption risk.

Firoona is fine, though the drawing implementation is poor, and a bug hides the scene thumbnails. It's only good if you view the storyboard in-app to read the frame text. Unfortunately, exporting is limited to images for an animatic (which I made), so you can't create a functional storyboard document for production staff.

Scene Design

Technically, this animation has only one location; the two other scenes are just variations, achieved by moving the same props around.

All scenes use an assortment of Reallusion Marketplace backgrounds and props. Key packs included the; Free Wall 5 Pack, Trees, Rocks, and Grass Pack, Green Bushes Pack, 22 Urban Streets and Skies Pack, G3 Scenes & Props Assemble Kits - Street Buildup Systems (Content Store Pack), and Skyline 01.

Mixing props from different developers can create an uncoordinated mess. To get around this, I use Render Styles in Cartoon Animator. It's a legacy tool, originally for Flash vector props, but it also recolors bitmap images, making everything look like it belongs together.

My video tutorial below shows how I coordinated the colors for the park wall scene.

Make Your Scenes Look More Professional Using Render Styles Color Matching in Cartoon Animator 5

Animation

All animation was done in Cartoon Animator 5. I manually keyframed major sequences because I had no suitable pre-made clips and didn't want to spend hours searching the marketplace for something close.

Specifically, I manually keyframed the entire wall climb and jump sequence (the walk at the end was a pre-made clip) and the ghost skater's triple flip motion. You can watch my behind-the-scenes video on how to make characters climb a wall on my AnimLife YouTube Channel.

Thankfully, DexArt's prop skateboards included pre-made animations, like the triple flip I used. The script originally called for a tre-flip (360 kickflip), but when I saw DexArt had already animated a triple flip, I used it to save time. A triple flip seemed equally difficult enough to struggle with.

The voices are all AI from ElevenLabs. I settled for Cartoon Animator's auto lip-sync because I was pressed for time and there's a lot of dialogue. Plus, if I have one minus for these DexArt characters, the mouth sprites aren't great. Particularly on Josh, whose mouth, you may notice, is all teeth much of the time.

Animated Effects

There are two major animated effects in the finished short, the ghost skater disappearing, and the lightening strike at the end. Both were done entirely in Cartoon Animator making use of Render Styles to recolor characters and props, and the Opacity timeline to fade things in and out.

The disappearing effect was created by duplicating the character. Using Render Styles
to recolor the duplicate green. Then changing the opacity of the green character to create
the glow effect. On top of that I added a recolored fire orb, animated prop by DexArt.

The lightening effect used pre-made props and motion clips from Reallusion's Weather Maker Pack (Content Store)

Video Editing and Post Effects

I edit my animations using the free, powerful editor Shotcut. Since I created all the effects I needed in Cartoon Animator, there are no real post-effects to speak of.

Other than standard editing, sound, and titles, the only post-effect I did was merge two scenes. At 50 seconds, you see the ghost skater attempting his trick in the background as the main cast talks.

This was a new project file, and I didn't want to re-animate the ghost skater or try transferring the animation.

Instead, I animated the foreground characters talking with a transparent background, then overlaid that over the original clip of the ghost skater used in the earlier scene.

Audio Design

Audio design was very minimal with just the ambient sounds of birds in an Australian suburban park playing throughout.

The skateboard sounds were a combination of ElevenLabs AI sounds (skateboard rolling along) and me trying to land a kickflip in my own driveway (lifted from one of my own skateboard videos). My thunderclap was also an ElevenLab AI sound effect too.

The Final Cut

This animation took about three and a half weeks from script to release, just hitting the Halloween deadline. It wasn't full-time; I averaged 3-4 hours a day, with some days off.

It mostly came out exactly as storyboarded, including Josh's superhero landing. I'm most proud of the manual keyframing for the wall climb in the first scene. Better animators might find fault, but it looks relatively natural.

If I had more time, I'd fix how the characters hold their skateboards—they look "stuck" to their hands, but it was a choice to save time.

I'm happy with how this animation turned out. The final cut flows well, and you don't really bump on the ghost landing the trick on the first try.

I don't know if it could become a series. I like the characters, but they don't feel like skaters. Even more so if you see the other DexArt skater characters in the series; honestly, they look more like 'poser' skaters to me.

However, you never know.

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