Kyle + Rosemary

So, It’s been a little while since my last entry, I noticed with dread as I checked the Random Cartoon blogs page. I’ve been having some computer issues as of late, not to mention that I’ve had to get a full time job. Yes, we’d like you (yes, you!) to believe that we can survive by working on our own fun cartoons full time but - alas - the bills…they stack…

First off I’d like to show off some BG’s. I don’t think I’ve ever posted any BG’s. Here’s a bit from Kyle and Rosemary’s school…

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X-sheets! Gotta finish! Gotta finish!

What I DID manage to finish (mostly) is the “official” website for Kyle + Rosemary. Feel free to check it out! It links right back to here, so you can come right on back.

I know Anne has a Mind the Kitty site and I found some others. Does anyone else have a website for their short that we don’t yet know about?

P.S. I just realized that in the above picture you can see that I bite my nails severely. My one vice!

I thought it would be fun to show a now-then kinda thing. I used to draw fantasy characters all the time, so I dug up a cel I made at age 13 with an elf leading a horse. I have no idea where I got the acetate but I remember painting the back with tempura paints and I had to use several coats to get it to become opaque. (At 15 I discovered Cartoon Colour Co. in Culver City and got the ‘real thing’) I even painted the background. I remember thinking how cool it looked at the time. Like a fictional frame from my own movie! In my head!

Hmm, this elf needs some anatomy lessons, but boy was I good at horses! Must be a…girl thing…
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As a young Jun, I eagerly poured through my Dungeon Master’s manual and memorized all the spells. I thought Dragonslayer was awesome. I read nothing but fantasy novels (and the occasional sci-fi). I worshipped Tolkien, and I painted a mural of a giant blue dragon sitting on a huge pile of gold (ala Smaug) on my bedroom wall, and I wrote a poem about the dragon and translated it into Elvish from the runes in the back of the Lord of Rings book. I sculpted my own “fire lizard” from the Dragonriders of Pern series.
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So this is what it looks like when you look into a scanner…in case anyone wanted to know. We have a great big scanner at work and I just couldn’t resist.

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Alrighty, I feel it’s my sworn duty to introduce some of you animation cats and kittens to my secret indulgence in an emerging geeky underground film genre: Machinima.

Machinima, or ‘machine cinema’ is an example of creatively using a game engine as a virtual set in which to ‘film’ a movie. You use the game characters as actors; it’s essentially real-time digital puppeteering. Of course, the quality and versatility of the film is highly dependent on the quality and versatility of the game engine; you’ll never get Pixar like results. But that’s part of the charm and the challenge of creating in this medium. It’s sorta like…underground low budget CGI filmmaking.

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So here’s some filthy merchandise I devised in the form of stickers to pass out at the San Diego Comicon this summer. Endless self promotion! Yes! That’s what it’s all about!

This vertical beauty sports a clever quote extolling what virtues befit an ideal woman. An ideal woman in the gaming world, anyway. Perfect for that social, I mean, level climbing geek in your life.

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Once upon a time, all we had was this in the Random Cartoons kitchen…..

Yes. Sad. Especially considering that in the main building, they not only had a soda dispenser and a popcorn machine but some crazy cappuchino making thingy.

And suddenly, this large machine appeared in OUR kitchen!

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CAST!

The Geeky Wil Wheaton
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Yeah, I’m throwing this rough turn of Rosemary up here at 5:45pm on Monday. As most of you know, the full body turn is usually the first page of every character’s model pack. It’s the one page that animators will pull out of the pack and tack on their desk wall for reference, and chuck everything else. Just kidding, but, well, it does contain the most info on one page.

I remember when I was young and excited and the industry was still all about the hand drawn animation in the early 90’s. My animation geek buddies and I would ‘collect’ model sheets from every possible show - in particular I always wanted to get my hands on the ones from Disney. These model sheets were the ‘keys’ to learning to draw the characters - usually created by the lead animator for the character. And having the ‘official’ model sheets [Read more…]