More Fester Fan Art And Updates

Been too busy to post anything, and haven't really had much to post lately anyway. Just wanted to let people know I'm working on a Fester Fish Christmas video! I'm not sure how long it will be yet but probably way shorter than the usual length. If I don't get it done in time for Christmas, I'm not sure what I'll do with it. It's going to use more limited animation than usual, because I'm looking at it as just a little bonus video rather than the next real short, and I'm doing it in a rush... That said, it should still be fun, so look forward to that sometime before Christmas.

Speaking of Fester, here's some new fan art!

 By my friend Kyle Mowat, creator of the fantastic short "Ballpit". If you haven't seen it yet, check it out.

"UPA Fester" by Dominic Noble

Still working on those long-promised Fester T-shirts. The smart thing would've been to have them ready in time for Christmas, but... Fester isn't smart.

Finally, I recorded another guest appearance on Dynamite in the Brain last weekend, so it should be online in a couple of days. The episode's subject is the 2002 Lupin III special "Episode Zero - First Contact."

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What Aspect Ratio Should I Use?

I'm starting the storyboard for my next cartoon, and I've got the plot mostly worked out in my head. It's gonna be another Fester Fish cartoon. On a somewhat related note, tomorrow will be my last day of work for this summer. I'm looking forward to having a couple of weeks off before school starts, and I'm hoping to get a big chunk of the animation done for the cartoon during that time.

I've recently gotten a laptop computer, which is most likely what I'll be doing the animation on. Since the screen is more of a short rectangle shape than the other computers I've used in the past, I'm considering doing the cartoon in widescreen. Most golden-age cartoons are 4:3 or so, so I'm concerned that doing it in 16:9 might distance it further from that 30's-40's feeling I hope to achieve. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any practical reason not to make it widescreen when everything else these days is. 'Fullscreen' has become something of a misnomer, because now it mostly results in there being black bars on the side of the image.

Youtube, my TV and the computer I'm using have all switched to widescreen, so it would certainly make things easier for me to do it like that, but possibly at the expense of that potential "old-fashioned cartoon" feeling.
What do you guys think? Should I do my next cartoon in widescreen, or... not widescreen?

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Exporting Even As I Type

I've finally got that damn cartoon finished.

Well, I was finished with the actual content a couple of days ago, but I've been having a really tough time figuring out how to export it best-- transferring the Flash files to the Mac and exporting them there only to find that the Mac can't handle the backgrounds properly... trying out every codec possible in Flash on Windows... transferring the exported files to the Mac to put together in Premiere and finding out (again) that the Mac sucks and only likes Apple formats, etc... Finally I decided to just use the older, slower version of Premiere on Windows. That seems to be working okay, and it's exporting from there right now. By the time I get home, it should be done.

I tried to add a very slight blur and some grain to the footage to hopefully avoid getting that overly crisp, cold Flash look. I guess we'll see how successful that is.

The cartoon will be viewable very soon, but before I upload it I also want to finish a small "introducing Fester Fish" teaser thing I was working on. I realize that at this point it's a little late for a 'teaser', but I think it's kind of funny, so I'm going to do it.

Anyway, look for the introduction and the cartoon within the next few days!

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Wish me luck...

My new Fester Fish cartoon should be uploaded within the next week. I'm submitting it to the Drop Your Shorts Festival at the Revue Cinema this evening, but it's not really ready yet. I've still got a couple of minor shots left that I forgot to draw, some scenes still don't have sound effects, and worst of all, I still have to export the scenes from Flash and put them on a DVD. No telling how long that will take... It's gonna be a stressful day. Luckily my boss is letting me leave work early so I can get as much done on it as possible.

I'm pretty tired right now. I only got four hours of sleep last night, cause I was (unsuccessfully) scrambling to get it done for today.

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What's going on

I'm going to probably be having more content on this blog in the future, starting now. Anyway, just to update whoever's reading this (re: nobody) about what's going on with me, I've just started attending Max the Mutt Animation School. It's pretty good so far, although honestly there's not a lot of actual animation-related stuff in the first year, so I'm not that interested in some of the classes. Life drawing is obviously very important for an animator, but I'm not so keen on the painting classes. I want to learn how to draw well, but not necessarily how to paint.

I'm working on a couple of animation projects right now, but both are going really slowly because of the amount of schoolwork I have. I'm about 2/3 done the third episode of Space Goose, and I'm also about halfway done a parody of some old anime.

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