School's out and my immediate instinct is to leap back into artwork and animation like a fat guy leaping into a buffet.
Unfortunately, graduate school has turned my brain into mincemeat. Frankly I need a replacement brain. So I thought, "Why not marry these two completely unrelated facts and create an illustration that reflects the state of my mental functioning now? Just sit down and run with it. Do whatever comes to mind."
That's exactly what I did. Only I didn't stop there.
I also thought, "Wouldn't it be great if I could not only publish the finished piece, but actually show the four or five people in the universe who might actually care what the illustration process actually looks like from my end? You know, sort of make an experiment of it."
That's also exactly what I did.
I sat down, Wacom tablet at the ready, Flash CS3 open and awaiting my orders, and I went on the hunt for a program that would let me display to folks the digital canvas exactly as I saw it. Enter "InstantShot!" This lovely little program would allow me to do something pretty cool - it sat quietly in the background and snapped screenshots of my Mac at 5 second intervals, not unlike a social worker supervising divorced-parent visitations. And so I began, vowing not to stop until something presentable resulted. After 90 minutes of drawing I had a cuddly, rotting, diseased zombie staring me in the face and over 600 sequential screenshots documenting the process.
Now, how do we put these 600+ images into a sequential video format? That's the question I asked myself. Thankfully, I discovered a cool little parlor trick in Photoshop that allows you to do exactly what I needed. (Score one for Photoshop by the way. Even Flash couldn't do this as efficiently as Photoshop could. Who know Photoshop could do animation too? High fives.)
After a little bit of video editing and some sweet beats from Flying Lotus (the track is called "GNG BNG" in case you're interested), I give you the process and the finished product. Check them out in the new 90-minute piece entitled "We Are All Zombies."
Braaaiiiiinnnnnssss... Om nom nom nom.
The Piece: We Are All Zombies. (click the thumbnail to view the large version)
I made a decision (or I guess a non-decision) in recent weeks that was a bit out of character. I let my birthday pass without a word on the blog. I let the entire month of April pass without a word, in fact. I also let the fourth anniversary of Gun pass without any big blog hooplah (that was yesterday, May 4th, 2010, by the way). I figured I've done enough celebrating past accomplishments and not enough completing current tasks, so I'd do better if I avoid hammering the point home.
Instead I'd like to mark the occasion a bit differently, not by promoting the already-excessively-promoted Gun, but by pointing the hot spotlight at some of the early works of Flash animation that guided me toward pursuing animation as a medium for artsy-fartsiness. I'm talking about beginnings, like the era of Flash 4 to Flash MX (circa 2000 - 2005), back when it was all about Macromedia, and "Adobe" was only synonymous with "Acrobat" and "Photoshop."
It was during these fledgling days of independent Flash animation that I first began to discover that there was a simple, affordable medium for telling stories with the artistic freedom previously reserved for television and film creators. The primary avenue for this was unequivocally Newgrounds, which remains the premier online community for independent Flash artists, animators, and programmers. Early works that capitalized on the capabilities of Flash are what steered me toward finally creating something that was actually complete, sensible, and cohesive (or at least I hope so!).
I present here five of the early animated works and games that inspired me to begin animating (mostly mined from Newgrounds). They range from the hilarious, to the dark, to the absurd, to the visually beautiful, but all have a special place in the ancestry of independent animation for me. Here we go!
One of the Flash cartoons that really set the bar for quality in independent animation. Adam Phillips' series of Brackenwood shorts are pretty damn unique among online fare. Every time he releases something new, people go nuts, and with good reason. The dude's probably one of the best independent animators out there. Super-slick animation, great visuals, and a unique cast of characters. 2004's "Bitey of Brackenwood" was just one of the first in a long line of great animation from Adam Phillips. The subsequent works have only gotten better and better. Definitely worth the watch.
This game, presented in 2003 by Ryan Khatam of Cracked Animations, represented the perfect blend of simplicity, style, action, and humor. Games like this and other works in the action genre really solidified my interest in telling stories through action and mayhem, while maintaining a lighthearted layer beneath whatever surface my work has.
This little gem came around in 2001, and it was sort of a sucker-punch. You see a preview image of stick figures and you say to yourself "what the hell is this nonsense?" Then you click on it, and what you get is a pretty amazing couple of minutes of violence in pint-sized packages. The Xiao Xiao series really set off the stick figure phenomenon that has since become an indie animation mainstay. That may not be such a good thing though, as most stick figure movies suck ass... and I mean hard. However, Xiao Xiao is definitely not one of those ass-sucking movies. Check it!
This 2005 short from Eric Drobile features some pretty crazy visuals and an interesting foundation for a story. Unfortunately, last I heard he lost all the data for the second episode and as far as I know, he hasn't had a chance to complete it since. Too bad, because this one was the goods. Really superb stuff.
Take the mayhem of Xiao Xiao, fatten it up with what I can only surmise are crash-test dummies, throw in amazingly goofy music (think: Six Flags' "dancing old man" commercials), add a sprinkle of background dancing, and what you get is 2002's "Madness Combat." This little cartoon inspired a spate of clones, tributes, sequels, games, and all sorts of other random crap. There's even a "Madness Day" at Newgrounds to commemorate this insanity. FIGHT!
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There are many other early works out there that are worthy of mention, some incredible material that has been released in the years since, and even more stuff out there that I've not even discovered yet. If you come across some ubersuperfantastical shit, let me know!
... and keep your eyes and ears to the internet because there's always amazing shit happening in the creative world everyday. ...including Gun episode 2 (sorry I couldn't resist).
