Animation and Video Life

Office space is a series I started on DIY animation site, Xtranormal , featuring two office workers, Steve and Vicki. Steve is a Waste Management Executive on the rise and Vicki is his some what jaded personal assistant. You can see episode 1 and 2 on my original Xtranormal post . Episode 3 picks up just after Steve has presented his report to the Top Brass. He confronts Vicki with a number of issues... Episode 4 (below) is the latest episode which I've entered into Xtranormal's first animation contest . The theme is relationships in celebration of Valentine's Day. There is a US$1000.00 dollar prize for the entry with the most views on Xtranormal's Youtube channel. The competition ends February 28th, 2011 so please help me out by sharing this animation as far and wide as you can. In this episode Steve has another chance to present his report but Vicki is some what distracted from getting the job done. This one is a little more racier than previous episodes so pa...

Lil' Peepz Jokester, Bat Storm and Bat Flash. The Lil' Peepz theme arrived on GoAnimate in a big way back in July of 2010 (can you tell how behind I am on updating this blog?) with it's own custom character creator it's been going from strength to strength ever since. To the point where nearly all the other themes on the site have paled by comparison. The first thing you notice about the Lil' Peepz is their complete lack of arms or legs. Their hands and feet just kind of float around their body (or if you prefer, in the case of their feet, their body just kind of floats above them). This makes them relatively easy for GoAnimate staff to add new costumes and most recently, action packs. Adding new actions, for the most part, appears to be just repositioning the character in the poses required without having to create any new drawings. Well maybe a new hand position here and there but not too much else I imagine. At around the time of the release of Lil'...

At the time of writing this post I am the third most viewed GoAnimate Member of all time and the most fanned , non staff member of all time (second only to GoAnimate CEO, Alvin Hung ). I get asked a lot - how I did I get so popular on GoAnimate? Whilst others, like GoAnimate member, gipsy , have created excellent web sites like Gispy Tips devoted to how to make the most of GoAnimate - including getting popular - I thought I'd share my secrets. Below is everything I've ever done to get me to where I am today on the site, listed as tips for how to get popular. I'll preface it with 'slow and steady wins the race' . I wasn't always at the top. It's taken me two years of releasing, on average, two animations per month. I've passed members on the site who are easily at the same technical level as me (and probably better in their own ways too). How did I do it? Read the tips below - it ain't rocket science! Tell a good or funny story. Tell it r...

Anyone who has followed Batman in the comics will know that my title 'Financial Crisis' for episode one of Bat Storm is a kind of play on words of the 'Final Crisis' DC series of comics. However from there, beyond the obvious parody of Batman himself, Bat Storm doesn't draw much from the Dark Knight's legend. Bat Storm is a single dad, working class superhero fighting crime with his superhero daughter Bat Flash. Funding their crime fighting through children's party appearances. In episode one, part one, money becomes tight when two REAL superheroes and a clown muscle in on their turf. Ep 1/ Pt 1 Bat Storm: Financial Crisis by etourist on GoAnimate The idea for Bat Storm's series began with the Will Smith superhero movie Hancock . One of that movie's key themes was the destruction created by Hancock whilst carrying out his business of fighting crime. Who actually pays for all that collateral damage? This question makes you look at films like...

Xtranormal is an animation site that claims if you can type, you can make movies . It's a bold claim but it certainly delivers with its online 'text to movie' animation studio. I would liken the experience to writing a twitter conversation where the status update box is shaped like a speech balloon. You simply select which character is speaking, write their dialog in the balloon, then add the next speech balloon to the list for the next (or even the same character) to say something. In fact if you keep log files of your various online conversations you could use Xtranormal to turn them into movies. Once you've entered all your dialog, click the preview button and you can see your animation come to life using fairly detailed 3D characters and sets. All the camera angles will be automatically selected and I have to say the automated camera works pretty well. The shots it chooses do make your animation look like a professional movie. It's not always perfect bu...

After my recent success in GoAnimate's Creating for a Cause competition I hadn't planned to enter their next official competition. However when it was announced that the theme was to create a trailer for a Summer Blockbuster (for a real movie or even a completely fictional one) I felt this was the perfect excuse to play around with my Bat Storm cast without having to write a script. Up until now I've resisted ripping audio from popular Youtube memes and creating my own GoAnimate interpretation because often I watch this kind of video by other GoAnimators and feel a little disappointed. Only because it feels like that person is riding on the success of someone else's content. It's kind of silly really because just about every animation at GoAnimate is a mash up of other peoples content. Why should mashing in an audio track make any difference? Having got over that I decided, wouldn't it be cool to see my Bat Storm cast interpret the audio from the officia...

Working on the first episode of my upcoming Bat Storm animation I discovered that GoAnimate didn't really have any suitable Police Car props. There were a few poorly cropped .jpg images in GoAnimate's community props section and a really awesome but stationary police car by GoAnimator, SolarBaby , but nothing suitable for a police chase. After making an animated motorcycle for Demon Biker I figured, how hard could an animated Police car be? Rather than go for my local police car style I thought I'd go for the more recognisable Dodge Police car that's been seen in so many movies and TV shows during the nineteen seventies, eighties and even early nineties. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good side view of a Dodge Police car to trace so I ended up tracing this image of a Dodge Nova and converting it into a four door Police Dodge, based on other images of Police Dodges I had. Finally to demonstrate my animated, custom Police car I created this short GoAnimate ca...