Ah, heck, as I was writing a critical comment on someone else's work it occurred to me that it was pretty hypocritical to do this and not expose my own, so here it goes.
These are a few of the episodes of our series about life in a senior community, "Never Too Late". I've also tossed in a few "shorts". As with any endeavor, we got better as we went along, and our pilot still makes me wince. And, truth be told, we're even better now (but our newest episodes won't get on the web until they've been shown elsewhere).
And, yes, I'm well aware it looks like Family Guy/American Dad, at least in terms of style. What can I say? I can't draw, so when I made my characters I used those shows as a guide, so much that some of them are TOO on the money (in our latest group of shows we've had some of them have a "makeover" to try and rectify this to avoid Fox coming after us :>). I'm a great imitator, not so much an originator.
I guess I'll suffer the slings and arrows here if you'd like, although I'm not looking for much feedback. I think I've improved the workflow as much as my talent will permit, so I'm not so sure there's anything anyone can mention that will help, but feel free to take your shots. The important thing to us is that we can bring a half-hour show in under 10 days.
http://vimeo.com/2636210
http://vimeo.com/2771830
http://vimeo.com/3077341
http://vimeo.com/3136182
Our Series
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
The writing is fantastic. I love it. Even though I have only watched the pilot episode I can see myself becoming a major fan of the series.
There are a few things that I think would need improving from what I saw but I don't know if you would have addressed those already.
1) The segments of your characters don't quite join up, particularly at the neck, wrists and shoulders. There is a minor overlap that may be invisible to the untrained eye but they stick out like sore thumbs to my animator eyes.
2) While the dialogue is good for the most part the audio quality needs some improvement. Some voices are way lower than others and overall the audio needs to be normalized.
Other than that it was very entertaining and I'm looking forward to catching the later episodes. This is easily as entertaining as any animated series on TV now so keep up the good work.
There are a few things that I think would need improving from what I saw but I don't know if you would have addressed those already.
1) The segments of your characters don't quite join up, particularly at the neck, wrists and shoulders. There is a minor overlap that may be invisible to the untrained eye but they stick out like sore thumbs to my animator eyes.
2) While the dialogue is good for the most part the audio quality needs some improvement. Some voices are way lower than others and overall the audio needs to be normalized.
Other than that it was very entertaining and I'm looking forward to catching the later episodes. This is easily as entertaining as any animated series on TV now so keep up the good work.
Re: Our Series
Dang, you are ambitious and fast and you finish what you start. Nice collection of traits.mkelley wrote: I guess I'll suffer the slings and arrows here if you'd like, although I'm not looking for much feedback.
Good work! Funny cartoons!
Question: Do you make money on this somehow?
Feedback: My only criticism is the upper teeth; namely, how they move up and down, like a garage door. In real life, of course, teeth stay fixed to the skull. In "Family Guy" and many other cartoons, upper teeth will teleport in and out, based on the phoneme, but you never see them actually moving independent of the skull. I'm not sure if this is one of those "too subtle to care about" things or not.
Thanks for posting.
I like the overall drawings and color selection. Characters are well integrated with environment.
I noticed that teeth floating on the lip sync you mentioned in other post. I'm sorry but I cannot stop looking at the upper teeth after you mentioned it
Just one technical suggestion:
When prepare a scene, start to animate it a few frames before and end it a few frames later than the needed shot length. It is noticeable how the characters "start" to act at the beginning of the shot or crossing things stop moving before the shot has ended (like the clouds at the shot of the old man trapped in the cricket pool in first episode).
Anyway great work. I'm envy of being able to do something at that level.
-G
I noticed that teeth floating on the lip sync you mentioned in other post. I'm sorry but I cannot stop looking at the upper teeth after you mentioned it
Just one technical suggestion:
When prepare a scene, start to animate it a few frames before and end it a few frames later than the needed shot length. It is noticeable how the characters "start" to act at the beginning of the shot or crossing things stop moving before the shot has ended (like the clouds at the shot of the old man trapped in the cricket pool in first episode).
Anyway great work. I'm envy of being able to do something at that level.
-G
Thanks all for the kind words -- they truly mean a lot.
phastraq, you are absolutely correct on both counts. The matching up of hands and arms has improved greatly as we went along, but it was only with Wes' (synth75 here) help we were able to completely conquer it through the use of masks. I can only say that this is one of the things that has bugged me greatly throughout our first six shows but now I think we got it licked.
As to sound -- sound has been a bugbear from the very beginning. This is a Reader's Theater group, and with the exception of one or two for all the rest this is their first exposure to performing in any manner. We record in a less than perfect room under much less than perfect conditions and while I can't say we've mastered it yet we are *much* better now than when we first started. But I continue to wrestle with this.
Floating Upper teeth -- yep, for those of you who followed my other thread (tonym, you might look to see my "Interpolation" thread in the general discussion), I only became aware of this recently and have definitely fixed it and, yes it now annoys me tremendously to watch the older stuff. Why I never saw this before I have no idea -- there is a term called scotoma which means blind spot in our eye, and in this case it was a definite blind spot for me.
Genete -- I do appreciate the advice about the starting of animation prior to a scene start. That's one of those excellent points that I'm not sure I would have seen myself either, and I will definitely keep it in mind. I know why it happens -- I always put keys to hold the skeleton in position at frame 1 and then start animating, so there's no question that all my scenes start from standstill. As a live action director I'm well aware of having the action start before the camera rolls (or at least during the edit of the scene) but what a great thing to point out and remember for all of us animators. I will put that on a post-it on my monitor, truly.
And, finally, no this isn't really a money making venture (we have made a tiny amount selling DVDs and in some public showings) but my intention is to finish the series (there is actually a definite story arc that will complete around the 13th episode -- I know it's hard to believe at times, but things DO progress :>) and explore the market here in central Florida with an eye towards at least getting it shown on a station like The Villages (a retirement community like Royal PITA except that there are 100,000 residents and their own TV and radio stations. It's a whole world onto itself). The target audience is folks my age, retired, but we have had some very good response from even our kids (folks in their 30's) so I'm happy so far.
phastraq, you are absolutely correct on both counts. The matching up of hands and arms has improved greatly as we went along, but it was only with Wes' (synth75 here) help we were able to completely conquer it through the use of masks. I can only say that this is one of the things that has bugged me greatly throughout our first six shows but now I think we got it licked.
As to sound -- sound has been a bugbear from the very beginning. This is a Reader's Theater group, and with the exception of one or two for all the rest this is their first exposure to performing in any manner. We record in a less than perfect room under much less than perfect conditions and while I can't say we've mastered it yet we are *much* better now than when we first started. But I continue to wrestle with this.
Floating Upper teeth -- yep, for those of you who followed my other thread (tonym, you might look to see my "Interpolation" thread in the general discussion), I only became aware of this recently and have definitely fixed it and, yes it now annoys me tremendously to watch the older stuff. Why I never saw this before I have no idea -- there is a term called scotoma which means blind spot in our eye, and in this case it was a definite blind spot for me.
Genete -- I do appreciate the advice about the starting of animation prior to a scene start. That's one of those excellent points that I'm not sure I would have seen myself either, and I will definitely keep it in mind. I know why it happens -- I always put keys to hold the skeleton in position at frame 1 and then start animating, so there's no question that all my scenes start from standstill. As a live action director I'm well aware of having the action start before the camera rolls (or at least during the edit of the scene) but what a great thing to point out and remember for all of us animators. I will put that on a post-it on my monitor, truly.
And, finally, no this isn't really a money making venture (we have made a tiny amount selling DVDs and in some public showings) but my intention is to finish the series (there is actually a definite story arc that will complete around the 13th episode -- I know it's hard to believe at times, but things DO progress :>) and explore the market here in central Florida with an eye towards at least getting it shown on a station like The Villages (a retirement community like Royal PITA except that there are 100,000 residents and their own TV and radio stations. It's a whole world onto itself). The target audience is folks my age, retired, but we have had some very good response from even our kids (folks in their 30's) so I'm happy so far.
Great work mkelley. My only 2 cents is an easy fix. A little more eye blinking would really help breathe extra life into your characters. This was one of the the first lessons ever beaten into me by a producer many years ago and it's stuck. Colours are great overall nice on the eye.
I can see great things happening with your series, well done.
Cheers
D.K
I can see great things happening with your series, well done.
Cheers
D.K
-
synthsin75
- Posts: 9973
- Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
- Location: Oklahoma
- Contact:
Thanks, Wes. Sharing with you was certainly a help in my decision to share this here, as was your tremendous help in improving the look of my characters.
DK -- if you looked at the pilot only I'd agree, but later episodes had enough eye blinks in them for my taste. There are a whole lot of things about the pilot that aren't representative of how we evolved (which is why I posted the link to the Grandchild episode). OTOH, if you were looking at some of our later shows and still feel this way I'll definitely take that into consideration (because I do value your opinion).
Wes' help has made it even easier to add blinks and thus I'm sure we'll be even better at this in the future, because I agree with you totally about how much life they add to a character --indeed, this whole thread started because I made the same eyeblink observation about someone else's work and felt that at least that person had hung his hat out there while I hadn't.
One thing I know for sure -- having AS has made this possible in a way nothing else could have. I've bought literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of software over the course of a few decades, and some I've even made some money with, but AS has enabled me to realize my dream in a way nothing else ever did. This software would be cheap at twice the price.
DK -- if you looked at the pilot only I'd agree, but later episodes had enough eye blinks in them for my taste. There are a whole lot of things about the pilot that aren't representative of how we evolved (which is why I posted the link to the Grandchild episode). OTOH, if you were looking at some of our later shows and still feel this way I'll definitely take that into consideration (because I do value your opinion).
Wes' help has made it even easier to add blinks and thus I'm sure we'll be even better at this in the future, because I agree with you totally about how much life they add to a character --indeed, this whole thread started because I made the same eyeblink observation about someone else's work and felt that at least that person had hung his hat out there while I hadn't.
One thing I know for sure -- having AS has made this possible in a way nothing else could have. I've bought literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of software over the course of a few decades, and some I've even made some money with, but AS has enabled me to realize my dream in a way nothing else ever did. This software would be cheap at twice the price.
-
themonster
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Thu Dec 25, 2008 1:18 am
- Location: naples fl
I'm not sure how serious you are about a "making of" sort of thing, but that's kind of what I'd like to see someone who really knew what they were doing take a crack at.
I mean, I *know* how I did our show, but one of the things that was so exciting about the Greykid project was thinking we'd get to see all their secrets (and be able to apply some of them ourselves).
Once you've learned the basics of any program the real gold comes from those little tips and tricks that others apply to their own workflow. Even if you read a hundred pages and then find one golden nugget it makes a book worth it. I have at least two or three dozen books on 3D Max like that -- it would be nice if just one person (Vern?) provided something similar for AS.
I'm always glad to share anything I can to help anyone -- I posted my eye rig here, for example. I'm a big believer in spreading as much information as you can out there (because we're all in this together).
I mean, I *know* how I did our show, but one of the things that was so exciting about the Greykid project was thinking we'd get to see all their secrets (and be able to apply some of them ourselves).
Once you've learned the basics of any program the real gold comes from those little tips and tricks that others apply to their own workflow. Even if you read a hundred pages and then find one golden nugget it makes a book worth it. I have at least two or three dozen books on 3D Max like that -- it would be nice if just one person (Vern?) provided something similar for AS.
I'm always glad to share anything I can to help anyone -- I posted my eye rig here, for example. I'm a big believer in spreading as much information as you can out there (because we're all in this together).
DK,
I *know* I posted it in a thread here, but for the life of me I can't find that thread (it is possible Vern deleted it? Or perhaps the original poster? It was a thread where someone asked about eye animations and it was NOT the one with Ben Franklin. And it was only a few weeks ago. Sigh).
Okay, with whatever parallel universe that thread existed on, here's the link to the file in THIS thread (which hopefully won't disappear -- if so, I'm starting the year over):
http://www.kelleytown.com/freeware/MyEyesOnly.zip
Nothing earth shattering, but it works for me.
I *know* I posted it in a thread here, but for the life of me I can't find that thread (it is possible Vern deleted it? Or perhaps the original poster? It was a thread where someone asked about eye animations and it was NOT the one with Ben Franklin. And it was only a few weeks ago. Sigh).
Okay, with whatever parallel universe that thread existed on, here's the link to the file in THIS thread (which hopefully won't disappear -- if so, I'm starting the year over):
http://www.kelleytown.com/freeware/MyEyesOnly.zip
Nothing earth shattering, but it works for me.
-
synthsin75
- Posts: 9973
- Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
- Location: Oklahoma
- Contact:
Thanks, Wes -- I really thought I was losing it (I did searches on all my posts and never did find this one).
While I'm not always sure of details I do have a pretty good mind remembering generalities on forums -- I kind of make mental bookmarks -- and when folks ask about something and it rings a bell I can usually dredge it up (or at least remember I remember it, if that makes sense).
But this one was driving me crazy -- so now I can be at peace <g>.
While I'm not always sure of details I do have a pretty good mind remembering generalities on forums -- I kind of make mental bookmarks -- and when folks ask about something and it rings a bell I can usually dredge it up (or at least remember I remember it, if that makes sense).
But this one was driving me crazy -- so now I can be at peace <g>.