Animation and Video Life

Bat Storm - Created in Reallusion's Character Creator 3 for iClone7. Three days before writing this post I had a light bulb moment for how to create my Batman parody character, Bat Storm, in iClone so that he would look almost exactly as I imagined him. There he is right in the main image of this post, in all his 3D toon character style glory. Along the way I learned a few things about using Reallusion's Character Creator 3 for iClone 7. Before I get into that I wanted to take a quick recap of the evolution of this character and how long it has taken to get here. Note: If you're interested, Part 1 to this post is here . It's not required reading and the same article is linked to again later. In the Beginning GoAnimate Charge Girl, Super Charge, Bat Storm, and Bat Flash. Bat Storm started life in 2010 as a Batman parody on the then named GoAnimate (now Vyond). His design was based purely on what was available in GoAnimate's Comedy World Theme Char...

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, ...

Puppy Love is an original animation I created many years ago that parodies the story of Little Red Riding Hood . It posses the question of what if Little Red Riding Hood really, really wanted a puppy? You'll find out more about Puppy Love shortly but first, a bit of history that inspired my interest in animation. Way back in the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties animation on home computers really started to take off - especially on the Commodore Amiga range of home computers. Back then the king of animation, who became synonymous with the Amiga brand was a guy called Eric Schwartz and more specifically his character, Amy the Squirrel. My animation is probably going to pale at the side of Eric's but keep in mind Eric's animation, "At the Movies 3", below, is Eric really at his peak. You can watch much of his earlier work at this YouTube Channel most of which was created on the Amiga platform. I've digressed from the point of this article beca...