Animations… and more!

Here ya go — your first glimpse of the next Goofy Graffix short, Scary Monster vs Lucky Frog:

This clip is from the pencil sketches I finshed last weekend. Don’tcha just love my cute fluffy little clouds? The shot of the monster walking down the sidewalk towards the house is missing the clouds floating overhead — those will be added at the coloring stage since I will need to do it for every single frame and I haven’t decided what color the cloud outlines will be. You’ll also notice the monster is walking through the house walls. Obviously, he won’t do that in the final cut, unless he’s a ghost. And no, there’s no audio in this section, so that’s why you’re not hearing anything.

I have four scenes inked now. Between scenes 3 and 4, there were 84 separate poses/layer elements to ink. That’s only about ten less than the entire How Space Wars Begin short. The movie is about 70- to 80-percent edited — minus titles and credits, it’s already sitting at around 2:15, which is as long as Revenge of the Ladybugs. That means when it’s finished, it’ll be the second-longest Goofy Graffix short, after Break Time. In other words, a June release date is not out of line. I’m a lot less grumpy with myself now…

Punched through the big Four-Three on Saturday. Woo hoo. I celebrated by putting the young ‘uns through another grueling soccer practice, then hanging loose with the family and stuffing my fat face with food. Life is good.

To commemorate the astounding personal achievement of continually breathing for another 365 days, the nice lady who shacks up with me presented me with the following gift:

Ain’t she purty? It’s got loads of pockets and sketchpads and pencils and charcoal and all sorts of fun artsy-fartsy stuff that I dig. Just the right size, too — I almost never work with anything larger than 9″ x 12″, and if I did I don’t think I’d want to tote it all around Omaha. I can now finally retire my scruffy green book bag that’s I’ve been lugging about for the last ten years.

Life is good…

In the past three days, I’ve gotten one and two-thirds scenes inked for the ‘Scary Monster 2′ movie. At that rate, with nineteen and a third scenes remaining, I’m looking at the end of April to have inking completed. Then tack on another month for coloring, probably another two weeks to deal with audio, final edit, blah blah blah…

Hmmm… looks like a release sometime in June…

June?!?!?!

Do you see?? Do you finally get it?????? I wrote “mid-May” as a release date in my previous blog, and in an instant, before I have a chance to turn around and scratch my butt, the release date jumps up a whole month! Just like that. Magic. Gotta be magic. Black magic, maybe???? Maybe a gremlin running around with nothing better to do? What’s that, Mr Gremlin? You don’t have a church to burn down, or a busload of orphans to send over a 100-foot cliff?? No problem — there’s an animator trying to figure out a production schedule who’s just dying to have someone give him a wedgie. Have at it!

He needs to find a girlfriend or something. Seriously.

Well, whatever’s causing it, I’ve learned my lesson. No more ‘tentative’ release date announcements or half-witted gazing into crystal balls. Every time I do that I look like a bigger idiot than I truly am. The damn thing will be done when it’s done.

Sunday marked the conclusion of the pencil phase for ‘Scary Monster 2′.  Except for some minor tweaks that we’ll fix later, all twenty one scenes have been completed, and are now patiently awaiting ink and color…

All I can say is “Whew!!”

Although I’ve got at least another month left, the hardest part is done.  Done!  All the edits and test reels I’ve looked at to date have me feeling good about life.  Inking and coloring will be tedious, but knowing the final result will look snacky-good… yeah, I can live that.  No problem…

I mentioned at least a month to ink and color, so that puts our tentative (damn, there’s that word again!) release date in mid-May.  Unofficially.  All sorts of wacky things can (and will) happen between now and the end of all this jibber-jabber.  The one I’m hoping for is a mob of friendly magic elves, armed with wicked painting skills and twelve-packs of beer, to show up on my doorstep willing to volunteer their time and energy.  A more likely scenario is an asteroid plunging through the roof over my studio, obliterating my computer and all the hard work contained within.  This is why we do backups…

In non-filmmaking news, the Sprout’s soccer team won their season opener 4-3.  Last season they went 0-7, so I’m already loving this season.  Maybe now the parents will let me keep my coaching job til fall…

This sounds suspiciously similar to the post I did on 3/12 but… this is the final week of pencil drawings for ‘Scary Monster 2′.  I have this entire week’s drawing efforts scheduled out, and so far I’ve been able to get everything done I’ve planned on.  So far.  I have Sunday as the tentative last day for the pencil roughs, and then we move into an inking mode. 

Did you notice the way I wrote ‘tentative’ in big bold letters?  That’s for added emphasis.  Emphasis on tentative.  As in something catastrophic could happen this week that would prevent me from finishing.  Or more likely, something less catastrophic like, say, I get freaked-out/frustrated and don’t feel like doing any more drawings.  Or aliens invade… okay, that’s just silly.  Anyway, if all goes well, on Monday I can start the inking and making things look purdy.  And my eyes will stop twitching involuntarily…

First soccer game of the season is the 30th.  We have yet to have a practice where all the team members have shown up.  This does not bode well…