Yaki and Yumi

Jun Falkenstein, my fabulous director has been working hard at creating the exposure sheets for Yaki and Yumi. What is an “exposure sheet” you ask? I have always called it a guide map of sorts, Jun calls them “blue prints”. They are used to help direct the overseas animators as to what sort of timing/acting to use when they animate the final project.
The voice track has been laid out by a “track reader” so the character’s mouth shapes are placed correctly. Jun also has cut out reduced pieces of my storyboard and done some drawings of her own to help explain what sort of action and expressions are needed.
***If you click on the image, it will appear larger***

Ladies and Gentelmen,
For your supreme viewing pleasure, I bring to you…a tastey sampling of..our PROPS!!
Props are created by pulling out the needed elements from the storyboard and then they are designed and colored.

The genius behind these particular items: Mr. Paul Stec

Here at Frederator, there is a hallway where all of us creators have been asked to hang a piece of artwork related to our shows. The frames are made out of pastel and foamcore…So most of the artists have created something that was drawn with pastels. Well, I hadn’t touched my box of pastels in over 10 years, but here is what I came up with..a fun and loose drawing of my favorite cartoon stars of late, Yaki and Yumi!

I have been having fun animating a walk cycle for Yumi..now if I can only find a machine to shoot it on! In the meantime, here is the expression sheet of our loveable dragon pal..I had BLAST creating it (and so did Yumi) …pun intended.

An animatic for those who do not know, is basically a filmed storyboard with voices, and temporary sound effects, to give the crew, and the animators an idea of how scenes are working, before animating it.
In this scene, Yaki has been complaining about being hungry and wanting to eat, but having no food or money…Yumi meanwhile has been eating everything in sight, Yaki dramatically begs Yumi to help him! Everyone remember those fortune teller fish that used to come inside a box of Cracker Jacks??? I used to love those…I still consult mine for all of life’s important decisions..

What have I been doing while Paul is coloring away you ask??? Well..I have been working away at character expression sheets for our loveable friends (as well as drawing backsides of the characters that have been designed..yes…even cartoon characters have backsides!)
Anyhoo…..Heeeerrre’s YAKI!

NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS NERDS!!!!!
Here are the wonderful doofi who interrupt Yaki when he is about to FINALLY get to eat. Paul worked his magic on my designs and took them a step furthur into MEGANERDOM!! The characters are voiced by me, so I thought it would be fun to post a soundclip along with these designs (thank you Kyle for your help)
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

Here is part of the “Yaki and Yumi” character line up..this will be an ongoing process, as there are a LOT of incidentals in our episode, but I hope you enjoy these for now…
I will post sound soon I promise..there was some trouble with it, but I hear they’ve got it working again..