Shake It Out

So I've been told these blogs have been getting a bit long in the tooth lately. Which I guess I should have realised, my last blog took took 10 minutes just to scroll to the bottom. So I will be trying to keep them a little more focused. On weeks where I dont have any animation news I will continue doing retrospectives of my older animations. That said, I have been busy on the first episode of the second season of Nimbin these last 2 weeks, getting around 1 minute of animation done.

Without giving to much away, here is Gerkinman riding on a tram. Here in Melbourne there are Trams, Trains and Buses everywhere, and quite often to get to where your going you have to take multiple forms.

As a general rule I much prefer the Trams to the Buses, not that you can tell its a bus in this shot. Buses just seem to take forever.

Bus stops tend to be in the stupidest places as well, they are never near shelter, at least not in the suburbs. So  if you get stuck in the rain you might just end up having all the brown dye in your hair washed out.

This shot shows Gerkinmans home, a giant open and empty space, with dust floating around. This is actually a throwback to his home in The Ultimate Asparagus 3. 

His home there is much less empty, but just as dusty.

And here we see Gerkinman looking back on his old life back in the country town of Nimbin. Awww...

I had some fun with the lipsync in this shot. Im just posting this because it makes me giggle. :O

You even get to see Gerkinman with his original Vegeta hair style in his full costume, something that hasn't been in a toon since 2007.

He doesn't stay that way long tho, eventually looking like the Gerkinman people have become familiar with over the last few years. All thats missing is his doobie... Im sure he will get one of those later tho. So what happens after his transformation?

Well, the movie cuts to this. Anyone who watched the old Nimbin cartoons should recognise this immediately. So I guess thats a hint. Has the camp changed over the years? Well thats a secret. I wont be posting any spoilers for the rest of the episode, any shots I do post will have to be ones that dont reveal anything, so we will see how we go. What you can probably see from this image is that it looks a lot more like the art from the original series then the art in the earlier parts of the cartoon.

Also my entry for this months Loopdeloop is finally up. If you want to know more about the process behind it check out last weeks post. Unfortunately I couldn't be there for this months screening because I was at a special screening of the original Jurassic Park. I didn't get to see it at the movies as a kid so it was a special screening indeed.

I also did 2 more scene re-imaginings from the older Gerkinman toons. Pretty happy with how they came out. I like the re-designed Spactafunk a lot more then the ones in the original series. Luis im not entirely sold on tho, I think he could use some more tweaking.

Also last week Melbourne Armageddon. It was my first time to a con in quite a few years. I did manzage to grab a few things while I was there. I picked up a short zine by artist Frank Candiloro called "The Widowmaker". I havent had a chance to read it yet but it looks like it should be interesting. You can see some of his other comic work just by click on his name back there.

I also picked up The Little big Book of Black and White Pinups by Alisha Howard, which is up there for longest title name with Godzilla, King Ghidora and Mortha All Out Attack. You can check out more of her work if you go back there and click on her name as well.

This convention also marked the first time Ive bought any graphic novels since I finished my Scott Pilgrim collection. 

I grabbed me a copy of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns which im pretty sure everyone aside from me has read. And also...

Transformers  Classics Vol 1, which is essentially the first 13 volumes of the Marvel comics from 1984. I had no idea that the Transformers lore was set down in these comics as they came before the series. Fascinating stuff. I have enough Transformers stuff to fill a blog of its own.

To close, heres me in the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Was pretty neat sitting in there.

And heres me with fellow animator Lochie Axon. He is dressed up as a Mudkip.

And thats it for this week. Tune in next week as I tell you about the time I cured cancer.

Jimmy's Dead

What a week, nothing really happened work wise, in fact I didn't hear anything at all about upcoming work... hopefully next week will change that.

What did happen this week however is I finished my entry for this months loopdeloop. The theme was spooky this time. Normally when it comes to doing these loops I end up going through 3 or 4 ideas before settling on a single idea, but not this month. As soon as the announcement was made I knew exactly what it was I was going to make. You can find the results right here, I call it Party on Bald Mountain. As you probably guessed this is because it is a parody of my favourite sequence from Fantasia, Night on Bald Mountain with the musical piece of the same name written by Modest Mussorgsky in 1867.



This was my first time doing a blatant parody in... well... years really. In some ways I think I may have stuck to close to the original animation, in the intro at least, but I guess the intro is what really establishes it as a parody in the first place, since it deviates quite a bit after the opening sequence.

You can check out some caparison shots below.







Tho heres one expression you never saw on Chernobogs face in the original piece ha ha.



Obviously I couldn't stop there, the real spooky stuff in the original animation were the demons dancing themselves. You can find some of my caricatures for my piece below.













Also this week I went back and completely redrew a scene from "I Am Gerkinman". After writing my big retrospective I felt compelled to go back and do just one scene as it might have been done if I was working on the film today. Naturally it came out looking nothing like most of my current animation. Ah well, I had fun colouring in this way, maybe I will use this rendering style for something... someday.

And speaking of retrospectives, lets keep going with mine. This week im doing both Gerkinman Episode 02: The New Girl and Episode 03: The N64th Dimension. 2003, what a year aye?

As far as I can tell, The New Girl is about Gerkinman hitting a button, which releases a robot. Once the robot is defeated the girl is released. Gerkinman thinks it was his defeating the robot that achieved this, but actually, Louis the Penguin just plugged the machine holder her into a power socket. And thats it...

Here we see Gerkinman, gone is the character model from "I Am Gerkinman" and instead we find this bizarre monstrosity in its place. The backgrounds remain just as horrendous as the previous cartoon. I cant remember why I changed the character model for this particular cartoon...


After Gerkinman presses the button we are introduced to a robot, traced from some game assets in one of the RPG maker series. I believe originally this design belonged to a Golem. Golems are just robots made of stone anyways right?


We then also get to see a redesigned Spactafunk, who tween's around like nobodies business. Hell, his psychic powers have become so powerful that his eyes no longer sit on his face but morph around freely as tho physics have no say in the matter.


We then get an amazing Dragon Ball Z style fight sequence where Gerkinman charges at the robot.


And then something happens, I think the robot his Gerkinman and this was supposed to release the energy in his face. Its visually confusing as hell, I have watched this so many times now trying to understand exactly what I was trying to convey here, but really, I can only guess... Either way, the robot is defeated and explodes.


Regardless of all of this, the new girl is now free. I believe she too was traced from some RPG maker assets.


Despite how bad this shot is, you can still tell that Gerkinman is chuffed as all hell about his victory.


And then we close on a shot of a burnt up Louis, the real hero of the episode.


You can find the actual cartoon right here if you dare.

The N64th Dimension follows up directly afterwards. Gerkinman is about to start talking to the new girl, later named K3rr1, before having a new villain appear on the scene. Chronomew is his name, and he is an evil pokemon that is hell bent on having Gerkinman sucked into an Ocarina of Time game cartridge for the N64, but before you can say Holy Lame Videogame Reference Batman, its all over.

The Dragon Ball Z references continue as Gerkinman and Spactafunk both feel a strong "power level" coming from the distance. It also marks the return of the Gerkinman character model from "I Am Gerkinman". I have no idea why, just run with it.


As you can see Spactafunks model has also reverted to the same one from "I Am Gerkinman". Something else you may notice and was relatively new to the series, were close ups. And lots of them.


Then here comes Chronomew. Now I don't remember the exact details of his origin. Mew in Pokemon Red/Blue was impossible to catch without a game shark, and Chronomew was supposed to be a robotic clone of mew and... oh god,  nobody came here for a history lesson on Pokemon. Anyways, hes a bad guy.


Gerkinman and Spactafunk get all close and snuggly because closeups mean you dont have to go to the effort of showing the whole body. Gerkinman is whispering in this shot and im still sort of surprised that it still carries accross.


K3rr1 then reveals that she too is a baddie and works for Chronomew, with the plans of sucking Gerkinman into the fabled Ocarina of Time cartridge. Now back in the day OoT was still super popular parody material on sites like newgrounds, and its a game I referred back to on a number of occasions.


Gerkinman is pretty happy about the whole idea, after all, it is his favorite game. (However, in retrospect I believe Majoras Mask is far superior).


And then he gets sucked into the game. You can see some light frame by frame work trying to recreate the look from star trek.


And then fittingly, Spactafunk and Louis decide that they feel like going to get pizza. The End.


And really, thats how all movies should end, with the heroes eating pizza. If you want to see this cartoon and you check it out right here.

And thats it for this week, tune in next week to read about how that Nimbin reboot is going. Remember that? No... oh... never mind.

Mercy Street

What a massive couple of weeks the last two weeks have been.

As I mentioned in my last post I have been working at Clemengers, and it has been rather exhausting. I was jumping from flash banners to website designs, mobile app layouts and back again. Its always good to experience new things while freelancing, but because the work place is a little ways from here, waking up early and getting home late can take its toll. I finished my contract there yesterday but they assure me that I will be back during the coming weeks, so at least I know I have more work on the way.

Since I got today off work I decided it was time to grab myself that new Macbook for freelancing, so I did. Nothing crazy, just a standard 13 inch, with an extra 4gb ram to push it up to 8gb. Also since somebody had ordered in a custom one with a 750gb HDD and then decided once they saw the small screens that they didn't want it (did they really not know that 13' isn't as big as 15'?) they sold it to me at the same price as a standard model just so it wasn't sitting around. Currently installing the master suite so Im ready to work when the work comes in. I was originally going to buy a small bamboo to go with it but i've been told a bamboo design refresh isn't far off so I decided to put getting it off until I know whats happening for sure.

Also since I had the day off I started work on this months Loopdeloop. The months theme is Spooky, and I decided that I want to pay tribute to one of my favourite animation sequences of all time. Not that you will be able to guess what it is from these two screens below.





Since I don't have any other real animation news this week I thought I would go back in time to my very first flash cartoon (to hit the internet at least).  Welcome to the year 2004 and a little film called "I Am Gerkinman" (Worth noting is that the original version was from early 2003 and has been lost to the sands of time, this is a slightly updated version made just for newgrounds.)



The cartoon was not my first attempt at flash animation, but It was my first project created in Flash 5 (I had been using Flash 4 up until that point and had no access to the internet). It was written and animated for a visual arts assignment. And was for the most part, little more, for the first half anyway, badly rotoscoped animation from The Animatrix.



It told the story of Gerkinman, the sole survivor in a country town after what appeared to be robots went wild and wiped out humanity. As stated earlier, the first part of the animation was mostly badly traced video from the film The Animatrix. While its certainly not something I am proud of looking back on, I do find it interesting that despite the fact the intro is so frame by frame animation heavy, that I didn't go back to doing traditional animation for several years after this flash.



Of course that could also have a lot to do with the fact that it was all done with a mouse, not the most practical tool for doing frame by frame animation. It also featured a bizarre mix of the line tool and paint brush tool with no consistency. Of course I can put that down to being self taught and really having no idea what looked good or bad, at the time I was too blown away just by the fact I was making images move on the screen.



Something I do admire a little going back to it now is the fact that I had put it lighting effects, something that I do currently forget to add in from time to time. This next clip contains R2-D2, I think I had put him into the shot because the video I was tracing was so pixelated I couldn't make out what the robot looked like. Most people thought it was just a funny pop culture reference.



Something else thats funny about this sequence is that it contains a lot of colours that I heavily rely on now in my work, something I didn't even realise until I went back and watched this animation today. I cant quite remember what the colours where like in the original Animatrix short, maybe they were the same.



The sequence also featured music by System of a Down, which I admit to liking in high school. I believe before I made this animation I had made another one using another of there songs "Toxicity". Quite often when I go back to these old animations the most jarring things aren't how bad the animation and character design is, but rather the music.



And thus ended the mostly rotoscope ending of the intro sequence of "I Am Gerkinman". As we see the last of humanity loose there struggles against the ever dangerous line tool. Watching this clip below, I dont know why the guy didn't just side step whatever that thing is. Ah well.



So now all the fighting is finished we finally get introduced to our hero. Looking sad over what is supposed to represent the destruction of mankind but is more like a blue and green mess.



He doesn't stay sad long tho, because he is an idiot, which is the one trait that has stayed consistent throughout his seven year existence. Something he did use to do a lot was make his own sound effects over the top of what he was doing. When I saw Clouds with a Chance of Meatballs (great movie by the way) and noticed Flint Lockwood running around making his own sounds I couldn't help but giggle and think back to this flash cartoon. It also is a great display of why you shouldn't tween people dancing.



Next we are introduced to another new character, and one that has sadly been neglected over more recent years. His name is Spactafunk and he is a psychic seamonkey from the future. He originally looked much like an ape but for these flash cartoons I used Mewtwo from pokemon as a major design influence.



We are also introduced to a Probe Droid. Something that just floats around and scouts I suppose. Looking back at it now its probably the least horrible looking thing in the whole cartoon. I still find the idea of a robot floating around with a sad smiley on its chest a little amusing.



Of course he finds Spactafunk and this an epic battle is begun. Turns out the probe is packing heat, and lots of it. The idea of small characters with large amounts of weapons is a comedy staple and a concept I still find entertaining. Its a shame the timing on this take of it is so off and the direction is so flat.



Spactafunk isn't having any of that tho, and being psychic he does some stuff that only a psychic seamonkey can do. Strangely this shot is the only one after the intro sequence that contains anything that remotely resembles camera work. It was also supposed to be a reference to the general idea of Dragon Ball Z but looking back at it now I dont think it was conveyed very well.



So after this little display of powers Gerkinman demands to know who Spactafunk is and makes a strange expression.



And then Spactafunk explains that he is indeed a psychic seamonkey from the future. This sequence also had a bunch of horrible visual gags, such as a gnome coming up in the corner with a "Hi Mum" sign to a fish and space ship flying past in the background. They are certainly a type of joke that I am glad I grew out of.



All of these bad visual gags send Gerkinman into a frenzy. Also worth noting is that despite the fact the first half of the film is full of sound effects and music, the second half has a very sparse audio landscape. So maybe thats why he looks so upset.



And then we are introduced to Louis, a purple penguin and also Spactafunks side kick, as you probably guessed he too is from the future.



One thing that did make Louis different to a lot of my characters at the time was that he didn't speak english, I basically made a bunch of horrible bird sounds and and then put subtitles on the screen. Since these characters could not speak his language they too read the subtitles in order to know what was going on. This is one of the third wall jokes that I think still sort of holds up, and its something I might even return to in the future. Subtitles... handy.



And now that all 3 of these to be heros are together, they go to find the key to the future, or story, or something. Turns out that key is a chick, it is stated in dialogue but its horribly showed in a visual sense in the shot below. Really? What the hell am I looking at?



And that conclude the first Gerkinman episode. Its always a little strange going back to look at old animations or other projects. I currently have 78 Newgrounds submissions, and while I doubt I will do a retrospective on each of them, I think I might go through all the significant ones. Anyway, if your still reading, hope you found this sort of insightful and see you next time. And if you want to watch this bizarre piece of my animation history, then click down here!

JUST CLICK IT!