The Push Up Challenge

A new animation! This is the first time in a very long time I've released two animations in the same month. Last time I was this productive was in 2007 when I would release a new animation every few weeks.

While I was animating Your Bones I started a stick figure animation and another Bill Burr video. I decided I wanted to make a video where I wrote everything from the ground up rather than use another persons material but still do it in the stick figure/Bill Burr style. That was the initial springboard for The Push Up Challenge video. I also wanted to try making a "swoozie" style video which is basically just telling a story with simple animation.

My writing process was simple. I wrote a two page monologue. Deleted 95% of what I wrote and then expanded upon the remaining 5%. I started animating before I finished the script. My original idea was to have the movie be a series of still frames but I decided to animate it.

I also wrote the music for this video but it was necessarily composed for this video. For a few months now I've just been composing a lot of short songs(about 10 a week) trying to convey different moods and emotions. I'm trying to build a library of my own background music that I can use without having to worry about copyright. I can also freely edit the music. For The Push Up Challenge I took two of the songs and expanded them. If enough people want I'd actually put the music online for other people to use as long as they credit me.

Concept art.

Unused poses!

Now what's next? I plan on making a couple very short videos before doing a longer video. One is just a silly idea and the other is a parody. Hopefully they each will take me just one week to animate which means I'll be releasing another cartoon next week! I am writing a few black and white sketch video in the same style as The Push Up Challenge as well. I also am working on a couple of much longer more intense projects but they won't be done for quite awhile.

Oh and I am still writing Directionless!

Your Bones

 

A bunch of sketches!

Very early on I wanted the movie to look like this. 

The inside of the book originally looked like this.

A Full Metal Alchemist inspired design!

Rough storyboard.

Final.

This was the first piece of concept art I did.

This was an early look I tried out. I used this shot in the final movie.

This is another piece of concept art.

And here is some concept up for the next dramatic movie I'm working on. It's not a sequal
but it's in the same "vein" of storytelling.

So I finally finished this movie! Feels good to finally be done! I actually have a series of 8 shorts I wrote in this style. If a lot of people like Your Bones I'll make another one!

I have a lot I can talk about with this movie but I'll save that for other posts. 

Brief Update

I know it's been awhile but I swear I still exist! I'm working hard on the next animation but I'll get to that in a minute. I've been writing Directionless very consistently! In fact, it's been one year since I started doing the comic again! Technically, this past year is the first full year of Directionless! One of the reasons I started writing the comic again was because I was working on the Roach animation! I believe I was working on it for about a month and decided to start writing the comic again because I was already drawing Jeff on an almost daily basis.

I'm happy I managed to keep the comic going for one year. The comic is going in a different "direction" and I'm excited to see the adventures Jeff goes on in the coming months!

My last animation was released back in March. Geez, 5 months without a release? I hate going so long without putting a new animation online, I'm sorry to all my fans but I promise the wait is worth it! I've actually been making one movie a month since then but they've all been freelance projects and they've been sucking up my time. In between projects I've been animating stuff for my youtube though! And luckily, I've gotten a little break this month and have spent every day working on my next animation and it's turning out great. I'm aiming for an October release! I also started another Bill Burr animation and even have another stick figure animation in the works.

Why Hello

So no new cartoon for April. No new cartoon for May. Will there be a new cartoon for June...? June was the original goal for my latest project but it seems unlikely I'll complete it by then considering the amount of detail that needs to go into it. I may do a short stick figure animation but I don't want to make it just to have a new release in June, I want to make it because I want to make it. Technically I have been releasing a new cartoon each month, they have just been commercials which I don't put on my youtube.

On a side note, Directionless has been going strong ever since I started writing it again back in August so I'll ramble about that for a bit. The comic is almost 3 years old now. During the past 3 years there have been numerous changes made to Directionless in terms of substance and style. The biggest change that people informed me of is that back when I first started the comic it followed Jeff's day to day adventures and felt like a single story while now it's more individual jokes.

Each drawing style came with a shift in tone. 2010 was when I first started the comic and majority of the story was about Jeff searching for his direction. In 2011 I switched to black and white and did a whole series of comics about Dean and Jeff interacting. There was very little plot although there were individual comics which showed changes happen with the characters lives. The change in color was simply because I was having waning interest in writing Directionless. I spent less and less time on it until it finally halted on the year anniversary where I wrote this summary of the series. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the pilot but couldn't get it to feel right. I was very sad when I decided to cancel it.

August 2012 rolled around. I hadn't touched anything Directionless related for a few months and decided to write a comic for fun. I haven't stopped. It started off in with the same tone as the first black and whites, just Jeff and Dean interacting. But I slowly started to throw in plots and finally did a series of comics that talked about some of the changes that happened in Jeff's universe over the past year that the comic didn't cover. That series of comics also covers a little bit of the pilot's plot. This series also covers a big chunk of what the pilot was about. On a random sidenote, this series of comics was actually the first plot line I wrote for Directionless. It couldn't make it funny when I first wrote it but I eventually used it for my Halloween series in 2012. Many of the characters from the original comic don't appear in the modern comic. There are a variety of reasons for that.

I personally like where Directionless is right now. I see it as a mix of the first two years. There are plot based comics and there are solo joke based comics. What are my favorite comics? I'm glad you asked! I have a few actually. This was the favorite from 2010, it always makes me laugh because it's so stupid. I also like this one because is so ridiculous. My brother actually said this to me while we were shoveling. Many of Deans one liners are actually my brothers. As for the more recent ones, I really like this one and I like some of the ones coming out next week. Anyways, that's that.

The current project is grand in scope. A lot of lighting and atmospheric effects which I have never done before. The storyboard is all done and I've done primary animation for about half of it. My original goal was to finish it by late June but that seems unlikely at this point but one never knows.

Bill Burr

After finishing Running I decided I wanted to do a short video. I listen to Bill Burr's Podcast and thought it could work as an animation. I listened to a few older episodes and picked a bunch of snippets I thought were funny or intriguing. I refrained from picking stuff over 2 minutes long. There was a lot to choose from and I decided to go with this segment because it's something I think we all do. It pretty much took me 2 weeks to animate the video, I did it very quickly.

I only did a few preliminary sketches for Bill.

I enjoyed making the animation, I may select another segment in the next few weeks to animate. My personal goal is for Bill to see the animation and mention it on his podcast and then to have me animate him talking about it. I haven't really gone out of my way to send it to him but I will later this week.

Aside from the Bill Burr short what is coming next? Well, I have a few Directionless animations that I'm working on but I do not have a time frame for their releases. I think because my last two longer shorts were Directionless I want to spend time animating something else. The comic is still being posted 3 days a week!

I am working on a video but it's it's going to be quite awhile until I finish it. I am going for a much more detailed look and a very intense story. I finished the storyboard and at the moment I am just fine tuning all the details. This one is going to be in production for a long time so I don't think I'll finish it until June or even July. Then again, by this point last year I was working on Way West which didn't get finished until August. It's possible I'll figure out a way to produce the movie very quickly and finish it before I realize it.

You'll recognize the character on the bottom right from a previous post. I sometimes take characters and swap them into different projects. I don't feel her art style suits the story

So I don't really know what will be my next release. I personally want to make another stick figure animation but not a music video type one. We'll see. I also have 4(maybe 5) freelance commercials I'll be doing so organizing my time well will be very important!

I will say that I want to release another video in April nomatter what. Even though I missed January of this year I think it'd be good to release a new animation each month!

A Directionless Guide to Running

I started this cartoon shortly before I finished Roach. For a long time I've wanted to do animation about running. As a warm up to this, I did a few running jokes in the Directionless comic strip. Episode 6 of the pilot Directionless series was all about Jeff getting into running and this cartoon is a very condensed version of that episode. I also storyboarded a music video about Jeff and running but it more focused on Jeff and his friends rather than the act of running. So this video took about 2 and a half months to make(it also helps that my freelance project ended giving me time to work on this cartoon), not bad considering my last few videos have been taking much longer.

What's next? Well, I started another "Directionless Guide" and hope to release that in a timely manner but I do not want to release 3 Directionless shorts in a row so I plan on making something random. My wacom tablet broke last week and I had to send it in for repairs but earliest I'll get it back is next week. I won't start my next animation until I get it back. All the current Directionless comics are a pain to make right now BUT I'M TRUCKING FORWARD.

Oh and here is that live action video I directed,



Recognize Giorgio's voice? He is also the narrator in A Directionless Guide to Running!

I haven't forgotten about this blog, I swear!

My last post was in mid-November, ouch. And I didn't reach my goal for releasing a new animation by the end of the year. I keep making my animations more complex which makes them take more time. The Directionless comic recently has a cross-over with Faceless Neil which was fun. I directed a live action video in January that should be posted online any day(it's out of my control).

The next animation I'll be releasing will be "A Directionless Guide to Running". It's about 85% complete. I still have to animate the final scene(rough animation has been complete) and add some backgrounds. I've started doing sound design and am about 1/3 of the way through. Hopefully it will be done within the next 2 weeks. I'm aiming for a mid-February release.

I'm hoping to make "A Directionless Guide to..." a series of shorts. I've already started another one(recorded voices) and I am writing a few more. I hope people react positively to Running, it will make me feel more confident about releasing more but I may release them regardless of the audience reaction(I will try to make each one different so even if somebody dislikes Running they may one about a different subject). 

As for other cartoons....I've started writing out another black and white Directionless short(classical music driven). I may have mentioned it long time ago on this blog, the orignal concept had nothing to do with Directionless. I started to animate it but realized it was going nowhere and dropped it. Then unrelated to that movie I heard a classical song and thought of doing another black and white Directionless movie. I merged the two concepts together and thought I had a solid idea but I still couldn't finish the story. I recently got the inspiration that fills it in nicely. As for non-Directionless material those are harder to come by, my freelance projects filled that void for myself. I still want to do another Way West-esque movie among the many shorts I've mentioned in this blog. 

I do plan on making another Brandon short come summertime(that is a part of a feature film plot line). It's more like a re-imagining rather than a remake or a sequel to my orignal short. I'm redesigning everything from the ground up and so far I'm really enjoying it.

Go see Django

Go see Django Unchained.