Animation and Video Life

One of my biggest stumbling blocks in moving forward with my own animation has been coming up with ideas that I can get excited about. Even with using time saving animation software like CrazyTalk Animator 3 creating animated shorts is still a lot of work that you need to stay motivated for. As much as I want to earn a living from creating my own animated shorts, the higher priority is to enjoy creating them... you know, if you enjoy what you're doing you'll never work a day in your life - that kind of thing. When I got back into creating animated shorts in 2008, after discovering GoAnimate , I was clearly having a lot of fun in the years before that site transitioned from allowing anyone to create animated stories to a business explainer video creation tool. I made somewhere around 180 animated shorts over the space of about 4 years - roughly 3 animations per month.

It took a long time for me to complete the final part of my Men In Black 2 series . The Super Rica and Rashy theme license on GoAnimate had expired and the finale of Rashy's master plan had already come into play in episode 6 . I had to find a way to tie up all the loose ends without Rashy. Unfortunately I just couldn't come to a satisfactory conclusion without Rashy but I did manage to keep his scenes to an absolute minimum - which was necessary since I didn't have the animated Rashy to use. Pt 7 - Men In Black 2 by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! I think I wrapped up the story reasonably well considering, when I started MIB2 the plan was for Rashy to return to his family, memory erased, as he did in the original MIB . The scene with Agent Obama explaining things to the media is my favorite part of this installment. It's a little out of character for Obama to slip up with the Jedi mind trick line but I figure he...

Way back in May and June of 2009 I released the first two episodes of my comedy series, How to Get Views The Evil Genius Way , intending to make more in the series at some future date. Nearly three years later I finally came up with a new scheme. Which is not to say I couldn't have thought of something sooner, I've just had a lot of other projects and ideas that I've been exploring in those years. My key problem with this new episode was that the Underdog theme license with GoAnimate had expired - and with it, Simon Bar Sinister's availability as my original star. There was also the problem of the Super Rica and Rashy theme license also expiring. Rashy had featured as a supporting character in both of the previous episodes and, whilst this new episode didn't really require him, I thought it would be funnier if Simon still had his monkey army around (having had it returned by Evil Witchy). This all got me started on the challenge of seeing if I could recrea...

Over the 2011 Christmas break I started work on Men In Black 2 - Part 6 unaware that GoAnimate's license for the Super Rica and Rashy theme would expire on January 1, 2012. Had I known the theme was going to expire, I would have not only fast tracked this episode, I would also have fast tracked part 7 - which will be the final episode of the series. Thanks to GoAnimate's CEO, Alvin Hung, who allowed this episode to be published despite containing a character (Rashy) from a discontinued license. If you're not yet familiar with the series then check out MIB2 - Part 1 to catch up on the story. Essentially it's a parody of the MIB films with President Obama playing the Will Smith role but the story is my own original script. For those of you up to speed, knowing that Sock Monkey, Rashy, is an Evil Genius and a master of disguise, below is Part 6 for your enjoyment. In this episode we see Rashy's diabolical scheme unfold with disastrous results... Pt6 - Men ...

This installment, part 5 of my parody series, Men In Black 2 , Rashy launches his evil master plan with devastating results but for who? Find out in the video below. Note: be sure to watch the video below before reading further as my behind the scenes notes WILL spoil the final scene of this episode if you haven't seen it. Pt5: Men In Black 2 by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! When I started making part 5 of MIB2 I had three objectives: Explain how George and Dick came to be working for Rashy despite being on his 'hit' list in episode 1.   Get Rashy into the White House.   Break Barack and Joe out of their cell so they could start heading back to Earth and expose Rashy's brilliant disguise.   The first two were pretty straight forward. George and Dick did in fact mess up after a practical joke by Barack and Agent A. Rashy's ingenious disguises meant he'd have no trouble getting to the White House (and t...

This installment, part 4 of my parody series, Men In Black 2 , Rashy's disguise once again doesn't fool Agent Obama and the chase is on but who really has the upper hand? Find out in the video below. Pt4: Men in Black 2 by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! Spoiler Alert: Make sure you've watched the episode before reading further! Initially this whole episode was going to be Barack and Joe chasing Rashy. I wanted there to be lots of action and comedy in the style of many cartoon chases you see, such as the classic 'hallway of doors' where the pursuer and those in pursuit run between numerous doors across a hallway, almost impossibly emerging from different doors each time. Then, as I thought about the episode more, as a viewer I'd be disappointed with a long, drawn out chase scene where the story doesn't really progress. Plus I already kind of did the same thing in the first Men In Black series wi...

My Men In Black, episode 2, parody series continues in these latest two installments where Agents Obama and Biden, having seen through Rashy's clever Newt Gingrich disguise, are now hot on his trail. In part 2 we see the return of Rashy's reluctant, double crossing partner in crime and what could be better than seeing a democrat firing off a few hundred rounds from a big gun! Pt2: Men in Black 2 by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! Then in part 3 not everyone is happy with Agent Barack's skill with a rifle whilst Rashy forgets his 'guest' status and clearly over stays his welcome. Agents Obama and Biden seek solace in a few after work drinks and Rashy regroups with yet another cunning disguise. Pt3: Men In Black 2 by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! Neither of these parts have much to report behind the scenes. Everything is mostly stock standard GoAnimate born ...

GoAnimate recently launched it's new US Election 2012 theme with a stylish set of new characters reminiscent of newspaper editorial cartoons. You can check the characters out right away by clicking the above link which will take you to the GoAnimate Quick App for the theme. Making your first Election 2012 animation is as simple as following the four step process in the quick app. If you want to make something a little more advanced you'll need to choose the Full-Featured App option which will fire up the GoAnimate studio. For me the new theme is an excellent reason to fire up a second episode of my popular Men In Black series  from a year or so ago. The premise is that Barack Obama is nearing the end of his term as President and, as a particularly gifted MIB agent who can see through disguises, he spots the Evil Genius Sock Monkey, Rashy (from the first episode), posing as Republican Candidate, Newt Gingrich. Watch part 1 below. Future parts of this episode w...

Mid last year I finally concluded my Men In Black series staring Barack Obama and AKON, the parody series I started way back in December of 2008 - and boy had things changed at GoAnimate by August of 2010 when Part 5 was finally released! If you haven't seen the previous episodes then I strongly urge you to take the time to watch them otherwise the current episode may not make a lot of sense. Click the following links, Episode 1 , Episode 2 , Episode 3 and Episode 4  to take you to each animations corresponding blog post. I was lucky to have started Part 5 before all the major changes came in at GoAnimate with the introduction of Premium Goplus+ accounts because one change was that AKON's theme vanished from public access. Even for Goplus+ members. Fortunately, if you already had an AKON animation in draft or previously published, all the themes components would still show up in the GoAnimate studio. I think this is still the case too. If you copy an old AKON anim...

I'm happy to report that my Save the Tiger Animation  (a still from the animation is on the right) was officially announced as the winner of GoAnimate's Creating for a Cause competition. My animation featured Paul Dini and Misty Lee's Super Rica and Rashy characters humorously discussing the merits of adopting a tiger through the WWF and comparing the plight of wild tigers to that of the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger. This is a win for Tigers because my animation, to date, has been viewed by more than 4100 people which is quite an achievement in its self for anyone who knows just how hard it is to promote a video online. Unless you're lucky enough to make an internet meme it takes a lot of effort to share a video around. I really have to thank everyone who watched and shared the animation, especially my partner who's efforts managed to boost my placing in the finals (for number of views) from a shaky fourth to a comfortable third position. I think we've su...

Important Note: Since this article and animation was published the number of Tigers in the wild has been revised to 5574 (as of October 2023). Source: World Animal Foundation It's a surprising fact that there are actually more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild. It's not that wild tigers aren't prolific breeders the problem is that they're being hunted and their habitat is being destroyed faster than the tigers can cope with. Some subspecies of the tiger, such as the South China Tiger , are already considered 'functionally extinct' - meaning they haven't been seen in the wild in over 25 years and therefore are most likely extinct. I've always had a soft spot for charities like the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature a.k.a. World Wildlife Fund) so when GoAnimate launched it's Creating for a Cause competition I thought this was a great opportunity for me to actually support one of their projects. 2010 is the Chinese Year of the Tiger ...

It's been several months since episode 3 of my Men In Black series staring Barack Obama and AKON but finally the two MIB Agents are back and hot on the trail of wanna be Evil Genius, Rashy (the sock monkey) - or are they? If you haven't seen the previous episodes then I strongly urge you to take the time to watch them otherwise the current episode may not make a lot of sense. You can either click the links in the GoAnimate player below to view each episode on GoAnimate or, if you'd like to read my background notes, then click the following links, Episode 1 , Episode 2 and Episode 3 to take you to each animations corresponding blog post. MIB - Part 4 by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! As with previous episodes, when I started I had no idea where the story would end up. Episode 3 ended with Rashy about to set his special robot agent onto Bush and Cheney with Barack and AKON heading out to track Rashy down. I did know that I wante...

My Men In Black parody series is a classic example of my script writing style. Way back in December of 2008, when I started the series on GoAnimate with Episode 1 , I could never have imagined where this story would go. By Episode 2 , Paul Dini's Little Rashy had become central to the plot as I started referencing two of my other animations ( The Boss of Everything and The Copier - Part 2 ) that feature Rashy on his quest to be the boss of everything . The key to my writing style is that I don't plan stories from start to finish. I just start them and see where the story and characters take me. By doing this I'm never daunted by the enormity of the script or how much work it might be to animate. At the same time I'm always thinking about what has happened previously in the story and seeing if I can relate the current story back to some of those references. MIB - Part 3 by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! As you can see in t...

The continuing story of my Men In Black parody staring Barack Obama and AKON . If you have yet to see the first episode , it's not essential but does set up how Barack happens to be a MIB agent. I'd recommend you take a look. In this second episode Barack learns the truth about the former President and Vice President and attempts to play a practical joke that goes wrong. MIB - Part 2 Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! Paul Dini's, Rashy , once again makes an appearance in one of my animations as the boss of everything (well almost). After being foiled by Underdog in The Copier , Rashy continues his scheme to graduate from being the boss of a corporation to world and universe domination! When I started this series I had no idea Rashy would make an appearance but that's just the way I work. I start with an idea and see where it takes me rather than scripting the whole thing from beginning to end. As soon as I wrote Cheney saying "Th...

Anyone who's ever achieved any kind of popularity on a social network/user generated content style site like GoAnimate, YouTube, MySpace or others may have come across the 'enthusiastic promoter/spammer'. This kind of person is someone who uploads content frequently (sometimes several times a day) and then proceeds to tell all their online friends to go view their content by posting comments on their friends profiles. They'll particularly target popular users whether they're a friend or not and ask them to view their content as a way of leveraging the popular users audience to their content. That was the inspiration for Imagine If... my animation staring George Clooney (or at least his head). The animation isn't targeted at anyone in particular but there are many GoAnimate users that don't understand that telling everyone about every single animation they make starts to become a spamming issue regardless of how genuine the person is in sharing their creati...

My first Underdog animation, UnderDOG NOT UnderFROG , was a little bit of a rushed job whilst the Underdog theme was still in beta test on GoAnimate. My animation was okay but not a particularly original story line. Once a theme is released site wide on GoAnimate they always seem to throw in a few extra characters, backgrounds and more. One of those was Simon Bar Sinister, the evil, plotting scientist (pictured right). It seemed a good time to try a new story. Underdog - The Copier, Part 1 Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! Traditionally in the Underdog cartoons Simon was the criminal mastermind however my love affair with Rashy as The Boss of Everything , specifically Rashy sitting behind that huge bosses desk, seemed like a great opportunity to bring him in for a bit of an unexpected plot twist. Underdog - The Copier, Part 2 Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! I'm not entirely sure where the idea of the copier came fr...

After having created a Rashy cartoon in The Boss of Everything I thought it was only right that Super Rica got some of the spot light. The whole theme of Super Rica and Rashy cartoons seems to focus on the tricks Rashy plays on his other family members, in particular Super Rica. In the first official GoAnimate episode of Super Rica and Rashy, Rica gets the rough end of a saw whilst Dad get's locked in Mom's magic, escape trunk. See the episode below. I took this idea further with Rashy locking Super Rica in the escape trunk and... well watch my animation below to see the result. (You'll note that I don't do voices for my animations simply because I don't rate myself as a very good voice actor. Plus I could never do Mom's voice).

Super Rica and Rashy created by Paul Dini and Misty Lee are hugely popular on GoAnimate despite their creators only posting three animations thus far (at the time of writing this). That aside, their cartoons really showcase just how good a GoAnimate cartoon can be. Naturally I had to try my own Super Rica and Rashy story and came up with a story based around the naughtier of the two monkeys, Rashy. Rashy gets into so much trouble it only seems natural that he'd get annoyed with being sent to his room as much as he is. Hence he longs to be the boss of everything. In actual fact this animation didn't start out as a Super Rica and Rashy cartoon. I'd originally planned to use GoAnimate's, Classic Cartoons, little boy, Matt (pictured right), and have more of a Dennis the Menace theme going but it occurred to me that my ideas suited Rashy down to a tee. One thing that I really like about this particular Rashy cartoon is the image of Rashy sitting behind the Bosses desk giv...