Generic Blog

Demo Reel

2010-01-31T01:53:00.000-08:00

Above is my sweet demo reel. It was compiled specifically for the folks at Evergreen College.

The song is "Dream Island Obsession Park" by Susumu Hirasawa, off of the Paranoia Agent OST.

The already thin lines get blurred on youtube, so if nothing else, the thumbnail image is ugly as butts. . . I dunno, maybe I should switch over to the brush tool.

Just to be clear, nothing is rotoscoped or whatever. I don't take any pictures or draw from models, though I keep a hand-mirror nearby for checking facial expressions.

Lastly, the thin fellow flicking a rope is what I'm currently working on. Looking pretty good, right? Right.

Revision

2010-01-02T00:08:00.000-08:00

I spoke really poorly in my previous post. I was all "20 seconds of nothing happening is too boring," and "it doesn't need to be any longer." I'll try to clarify what I meant, 'cause what I said was total garbage.
I said that I didn't understand why people thought my cartoon was too short, when I should have questioned why it would have been better with filler. See, I'd rather watch a 5 minute video that's non-stop entertaining instead of a 10 minute video that's half entertaining and half tolerable, and I'd be bothered to watch a 15 minute video that's one-third entertaining, one-third tolerable, and one-third filler (such as poorly done exposition). It feels like an awful lot of people, on Newgrounds at least, would prefer the 15 minute video over the 10 or 5 minute ones. In short, I felt that there was as much entertaining material as was necessary in my video (though I certainly COULD have added more), but people would have enjoyed it more if I added 60 seconds of people standing around doing nothing interesting. This bugs me.
Also, as a general rule, if there is an expanse of 20 seconds in a video that is neither entertaining nor vital to the story, it seems to me that it can be cut out. A couple movies that are great about not wasting any time or boring the viewers are Princess Mononoke and Dead Leaves. Check them out if you get the chance.
Lastly, I posted a sketchy thing on Newgrounds yesterday. I have LOTS of wee doodles like this, but I wont post any others.

New Animation

2009-07-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, I'd like to say I posted a new animation on Newgrounds. It's got a score of 3.5 as of now, and I can't help but think that's lower than it aught to be. Yeah, I'm whining about how great and unrespected I am again. I think the complete lack of audio dropped it's score substantially- like, much more than it should have. Sad day.
Here's the link:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/505161

Also, people are still complaining about this being short. Even though it's finished. I don't understand. There is a clear start, middle, and end. There are no loose ends that need tying and it is entertaining (to me, at least) at the length that it is. Why would I want to extend it? I suppose I could put a 20 second long pan of the scenery/intro to the situation that is totally boring like in the most highly-rated cartoon on newgrounds.
Don't get me wrong, that video, "BunnyKill 4," isn't a bad cartoon. It's just that my belief about television, movies, cartoons and the like is that if there is a 20 second or more period that isn't somehow entertaining, it should be cut out.

Deviantart

2009-04-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

I got an account. Not proud of it, but it's a good site for hosting stuff, so I wont complain.
http://captainheadwound.deviantart.com/

Animation Bundle

2008-09-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

I posted a set of animations yesterday on Newgrounds. Here's the link. While it scored higher than the first thing I submitted, this still deserves to be more recognized than many higher-rated things. Oh well.

EDIT: I misspoke. What I should have said was that many higher-rated things deserve to be less recognized.

Anyway, the main page of the thing is very gimmicky and unattractive. I don't like it at all, but I assumed that this sort of pointless movement is precisely the sort of thing that would catch the attention of most newgrounders.
I'm upset that the framerate is only something like 1/2 or 2/3 of what it should be. I think flash begins to lag (at least when it's hosted online) if there are too many unique lines & vectors. The video is much less attractive this way, so I may try to fix it sometime.
EDIT: I sort of fixed the framerate. By making it have the correct amount of fps, however, it lags a bit and may skip a frame or two. It's better than before, but not quite perfect. Resubmitting the videos like this increased its score by a little, but the viewers seem to see less of a difference than me.
The "Worm" animation took the most thought and effort. I decided to do something slightly creepy, and I expect to do much, much, weirder animations in the future. I'm happy with the result.
The "Tough Guy" is modeled after my own body. I wasn't interested in making facial expressions for this one, and tried something a bit more stylish than the body for the head. The final result was originally just a sketchy version for something I planned on detailing more and making more looney. This is sort of shown by how the hands start as misshapen bubbles and become actual hands midway through the loop (this may be hard to notice, because I tried to blur the "actual hands" a lot, so they're still a bit amorphous). When I began making the version that I originally wanted to be final, I found it too difficult to keep consistent and fluid, so scrapped it and improved the sketch. I'm not happy with the part where he flexes his muscles, but other people seen to like it, so I'll leave it alone.
The "Hand" doesn't look very smooth to me. I actually like how it is, but I can understand why someone would like it to be more simple by moving in an easier shape like a circle.
The run cycle is very basic. The head doesn't even bob. I expect to make many more walk/run cycles in the future, so I hope to improve my abilities.

It's been a while.

2008-09-24T15:24:00.001-07:00

I seem to not have posted in a long while. That's because, frankly, I haven't had anything that I particularly wanted to say and I haven't accomplished much of anything on the computer that I could show you.
The main reason I'm posting is to point out that I found out who made this awesome thing, which I posted a link to in a previous post. The author's name is Fred Perry and here's his Youtube account. Honestly, his character designs and coloring aren't that good, but he is SO GOOD at animating, it doesn't matter. His characters have a fluid, consistent, bubbly feeling that is really great. I hope I have the patience and skill to animate like this guy, someday.
On a similar note, I've made a bundle of short animation loops that I think I will put into a single file and post on this blog. I'll probably have Newgrounds host it again. Let's hope that it scores higher than 2/5, this time.

Religion

2008-08-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

I've got to mention this upfront: if I say "everyone" is one way or this "never" happens or that's "always" true, please understand that I think absolutely nothing is guaranteed or could be proven to the point that nobody could possibly come up with any reason to doubt it. (That sentence is sort of an oxymoron or something, isn't it?) Also, I often say absolute words like those for emphasis, and don't mean them literally all the time.

It can be very difficult to express your beliefs about stuff that you can't quantify, especially through text. I, conceded as I am, think I am really very good at arguing, but it's always tough to argue about religion. See, I figure that most of us are the religions our parents are, and are probably quite brainwashed into sticking with that religion. Even if we are provided with overwhelming evidence and reason, we bull-headedly refuse to agree that a religion other than our own could be even close to correct, and our own is certainly correct. I may or may not be an exception to this, but can't be certain because, you see, I'm the same religion as my father! It's too bad; if I honestly had different religious beliefs than my parents, I might have a better perspective on this sort of thing, but nobody has ever made a more convincing argument about what is or is not correct about religion, in my opinion, than my father.

It seems to me that an immense amount of people angry or confused about religion who want to express themselves or convince others that they are correct will dish out examples of great spiritual people and the history of religions and statistics and describe what is or is not moral and what is or is not humane and what is or is not going to be rewarded, and this all gets very repetitive. I hope to steer clear of these worn out ways to convince other people of what religion is or is not correct if I can.

Lots of religions have have been invented. Even if we were to, for argument's sake, assume some religion is absolutely correct or that many religions draw from the real truth of the universe, there are going to be LOTS of religions that just contrast too much and aren't true. The few people who feel that every single religion has a small amount of truth unique to it or, worse yet, the people who think every religion is 100% correct, are idiots. Perhaps idealistic, good-hearted people who want everything and everyone to be correct and happy, but still idiots. With that in mind, I'd like to point out a few reasons why someone might want to invent a religion.

First off and most importantly, most of the religions that exist provide security. They say something to the effect of 'do good things and you will be rewarded, and do bad things and you will be punished.' Just for the record, "doing good things" in most religions would include making the world better and faithfully following that religion, while doing bad things would be, well, the opposite. That isn't always the case, of course. A Satanist's idea of "doing good things" would be more like faithfully following that religion and making the world better place specifically for Satan, which might be very bad for the rest of us. Whether we take a religion like Christianity that says to be kind, moral and faithful or a religion like Satanism that says to be destructive, immoral and faithful or another religion like Buddhism that says to be happy and humane, they all sort of promise the same thing. You will be rewarded for following them. You'll go to heaven or be praised in hell or have good karma and achieve enlightenment or whatever. The knowledge that doing good things or following a higher power will reward you really comforts many people. I'd even say most people. If you walked up to just about any figure of religious authority (a priest, monk, rabbi, diabolist, etc.) and told them "no matter what you do or why you do it or who you do it for, you will not be rewarded or punished by any divine force or higher power or by the will of the universe, because none exist and you were not made for a spiritual reason," they might do anything from saying "I'm sorry you feel that way. I hope you change," to punching you right in the nose.

Whoever comes up with anything that convinces people to be good and makes them happy is probably a very wise person. Though they may know that their creation is just a lie, they could sleep well with the knowledge that they've made the world better. Really though, isn't it a comforting thought to know that the actions you take will definitely have consequences appropriate to how "good" they were?

Second, the majority of religions insist that there is some form of existence beyond death. Many atheists believe that at the end of your life, you will simply shut down forever, like a broken computer. It won't be like sleep; you will no longer think or dream or exist, as far as you know. You wont know who you are or what you have done in life, but you wont mind, because you will not feel. You wont even question why you don't know these things, because you will utterly lack the ability to. Your body will rot and be broken down, and that is the end of you and all of existence, as far as you know, forever. Quite a grim thought. I would much, much rather believe that when I die I will come back to life as someone new or meet the creator of the universe and live with it forever. Living with the thought that when you are dead your mind (and "soul," if it happens that you believe in souls or that minds and souls are different things) is just as active as your body seems quite unpleasant to me, though it honestly seems likely. I think if you asked someone who has never ever heard of religion or spirits and has been a hermit for their whole life if the fish he ate for lunch is still thinking about fish things, but is simply no longer in its body, he would say no and that there are no grounds for thinking that. Similarly, if you had a robot that could walk around and was constantly running calculations on its own and displaying them on a big screen but then one day it stopped walking around and no longer displayed anything on the big screen and in fact did nothing noticeable, say do to a lack of electricity, the scientist who built it would probably tell you "no, along with moving and displaying, this robot has stopped calculating all together. It hasn't begun calculating in some undetectable alternate dimension or in the body of another robot, but has simply stopped."

I would give anything to believe that I will keep thinking after I die and will live on forever in some way. Not 'in the hearts of my friends and family' or anything like that, but in a way that I could notice. It's almost difficult to believe that at some point in time nothing, not even myself, will matter to me and my nonexistent opinion.

You see, both of these things that the vast majority of invented religions provide, a sense of karma and an afterlife, are extraordinarily appealing. Does the correct religion provide these? I hope so.

Biking

2008-07-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

I decided to bike up to Burlington today, which is about 18 miles from where I live. What should have been about 37 miles total of biking, via me getting lost several times, became a 70+ mile ride ending in a popped tire. I couldn't buy a pocket-sized tire pump and my regular pump didn't fit anywhere on my bike, so I didn't bring one. Ended up walking for 1 to 2 miles before getting a ride back home. I was only about 5 more miles from reaching my house, too. How sad.
This might not be that much biking for some people, but I'm hungry, fat, out-of-shape guy. This was A LOT for me.
I'm an idiot and didn't put sunblock on. I'm a bit burned. My bike, at one point, made a very serious effort to anally rape me. I also, because I wear sandals, actually stubbed my toe while going approximately 15 mph. It hurt.
EDIT: So, yeah, apparently it's only a bit over 16 miles from where I live to Burlington, so I actually only biked approximately 60 miles after all. Hooray.

Best Game Ever

2008-07-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe not THE best. But right up there in the, maybe, top 20 video games of all time? It's certainly the most underrated video game in history, seeing as how so few people know about it.
Doukutsu.
For the love of Atheist God, play this if you haven't already. It is an utter masterpiece of video gamery. It is freeware, about 4 years old and almost entirely created by 1 person over 5 years. It's genius. The game has wonderfully simplistic graphics and an easy-going play style, and can probably be beaten in 1 day. I just don't know what else to say about it.
I've played through it 5 times (I think?) and my hell speedrun time is about 3:40, if I remember. I have a life.

Scanner

2008-07-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

I love to draw. I really do. Lots of people my age say that I could be a professional, but they typically don't know what they're talking about. I appreciate the complements and all, but I'm not NEARLY good enough relative to my age to work towards being a professional artist. Also, I'm a complete novice at all these digital coloring programs like Corell Painter that are so popular nowadays.
Matter of fact, I'd practice more with this sort of program if I was able to scan my hand-drawn stuff onto the computer so I could touch it up and make it shine there (I'm much worse at drawing things strait onto my computer than on paper and I just plain don't like doing it). Trouble is, good home scanners are really hard to come by. I've got 2, and neither work at all. They're fine printers, but the scanning feature is worthless.
Why I'm sort of thinking about this is I'd like to try animating something frame-by-frame in black and white on paper. Could be a good learning experience. This will never happen, however, if I don't get an actually good scanner. Blah.

Unskilled people trying hard

2008-07-13T23:40:00.001-07:00

Just saw this video. Kinda cute.

It is really very uplifting for me to see fairly unskilled artists working extremely hard on something like this. The character designs are poor and the poses are terrible. At no point to I feel a sense of life in the characters. Also, the writer's jokes are not very funny or clever. However, This video looks like a finished, respectable, cleanly-cut piece of art that a serious group of people tried very hard to create. I'm sure I sound like a jackass (what's new?), but I'm fairly sure I'm a better artist than most of the animators of this video. However, I just don't have the patience and motivation to create a polished, real creation like this.
The creators of this video deserve praise. I bet they could make a really marvelous animation if they just honed their abilities at making individual frames look good and maybe had someone better design the choreography.

Mind Game

2008-07-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

I really do hate most anime, along with most animation, along with, as a matter of fact, most televised entertainment. But I don't hate it all. This movie that I just recently watched, Mind Game, is heartbreakingly beautiful. Also funny. Created by one of my favorite directors, Masaaki Yuasa (who has consistently delivered superb quality and style in his animations along with magnificent, deep plots), Mind Game is a must-watch.
Below is one of the best scenes in the movie. Unfortunately, this is really the type of movie you'd want to watch in a more high-quality, wider screen format. I'd recommend avoiding watching clips from this movie on youtube. Still, this is awesome.
EDIT: Turn your volume up.

Be sure to check out some of Yuasa's other work (namely the shows Kemonozume and Kaiba) too!

Arguing anime

2008-06-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

Someone who commented on my video asked if I draw anime. I said I don't like generic anime. Then we personal messaged eachother.

At 6/27/08 9:05 PM, ravemastaj wrote:
: There's a generic anime style? That's a new one! I could name 5 different animes (including flash submitions) with different anime styles easily.
:
: 1. Dendyn Dynasties
: 2. There she is!
: 3. Chobits
: 4. FLCL (aka Fooly Cooly, aka Furi Kuri)
: 5. Anything Chibi (not an anime, although that would be a cool name...)
:
: Just look any of the last 3 up in google. Generic anime my foot! That review comment made my day! :)
: Thx for caring about your fans, and I hope you learn some new styles and get some more ideas.

I replied:
I'm glad to see someone legitimately backing up their opinion. But I stand by what I said.
First off, I want to address Chobits. Chobits is as generic an anime as any. Unless you are highly trained in watching anime, all (please don't make a big deal if like 1 or 2 characters don't fit into this) of the characters look like girls. With an astounding lack of fat, muscle and masculinity, everyone is about equally feminine. Additionally, Chobits has this extraordinarily standard anime hair (set into ridiculous styles and covered in an absurd amount of sheen), these huge, massive, take-up-half-the-face glimmering eyes that, while a very good idea in my opinion, are overused beyond belief, and lastly these tiny sideways spikes for noses that I have really grown to hate.
I googled Dendyn Dynasties and it seems to share many of the generic things about Chobits (eyes and hair shape, mostly). It does look sort of different from most anime, but it still gives a person like me that bland, uncreative, 'already made up by someone else' feel. Any child can come up with the idea of taking a human body, then giving it fur, an animal face, and a tail.
I don't have any problem with There She Is. While the style is simple enough, it's a well done cartoon that separates itself from most other cartoons (anime included) and elevates itself well above almost all movies on newgrounds. Also, There She Is is korean (does anime have to be japanese?), and I really don't think I'd call it anime, but I've never looked the word up and can't say for certain.
I'm tired of 'anything chibi.' Chibis are standard. Chibis are uncreative. I rarely (but not never) see chibis used in an effective or expressive way. Also, I think all chibis look alike. Not identical, but alike.
FLCL does use many of these 'normal anime things,' but it does it very well. VERY WELL. I love FLCL, as I love most really well done cartoons. I'd even go so far as to say FLCL is a masterpiece– it's FAR better than the vast majority of shows (not just animations), to say the least.

Please don't take this stuff I'm saying offensively. You seem like a perfectly reasonable person, and I LOVE to argue. Especially about stuff I feel like I know about, like animation.

I think this does a half-decent job of summing up my feelings on anime.

Wow! I'm angry!

2008-06-27T14:34:00.001-07:00

My video!

My precious video, which I spent so much damn time on, got a score of 1.5/5 on Newgrounds! That's outrageous! I know my thing wasn't amazing and wasn't gonna get front page or anything like that, but it's WAY better than lots of stuff that got scores of 3's or higher. take this, for example. This video, which has a score of 3.4, is NOT ENTERTAINING. There isn't one original or new joke, no good animation, no good sound, no creativity, and no good drawings. Whoever made it obviously has no ability to actively entertain (this is probably the case for most people, though, so it's not really something to be ashamed of). Despite that, people were drawn to this pile of shit and compelled to hoist it above other, better videos. Mine is maybe a one hundredth of the length of this video, but I'll bet you anything I worked harder on mine and that mine could entertain more people. The reviews about my video mostly comment on how short it is and say I need to improve that, but I disagree with their evident belief that short animations are automatically bad.

Look at this animation (I don't know who made it– if you know their name or website, please tell me). It's good. It's REALLY good. it's funny, well done, and addictive as hell. I could sit around watching this animation loop over and over all day. I was trying to go for a feeling like this. I don't know, maybe the reviewers were just giving animations a quick glance, and didn't really take the time to seriously analyze stuff. I guess I should have been braced for that. Bah. Maybe the people voting wont suck so much next time I submit something.

EDIT: Know what? That's not fair of me. My tiny practice thing might have some good qualities, but I really don't have the right to complain. I left out loads of very, very easy things like a play button that would have made the video better. Plus, if I'd only about doubled the length of the animation, I bet if would've seemed 10 times better overall.
Aside from that, frankly, neither my video nor the first video I linked to really deserve any praise at all. Sorry for being such a dick about this. I'm a hypocrite.

I finally got my video up

2008-06-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

Righty. Screw youtube. I'm crippled at youtube. Here's the Newgrounds link.

4 hours of work for a 10 second video

2008-06-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

I'm an interesting person who needs a blog, right? Right.

I keep trying to upload this animation I made to youtube, but it keeps failing to process. This is getting really embarrassing... Hopefully I'll post the video later tonight.