Will White

jaster @ 2008-03-21T17:05:00

2008-03-21T21:21:46Z

So I already wasn't posting anyway, but now there's a stupid internet strike, so I HAVE to post if I'm going to maintain my cred as an internet rebel.

There's a concert tomorrow at the glassworks in Louisville, KY at 8 PM. There will be something, like, a hojillion bands there, but most relevant to myself, Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears will be doing their thing. Even more relevantly, there will be a sneak preview of the music video for "Imitation of the Sky" which has been being worked on for a while, and I think is far enough along that I can afford to talk about it a little more openly.

The video is not done yet, so this is kind of an "in progress" preview that will probably not be made a very big deal. It doesn't have too far to go though, so fairly soon it will (hopefully) take the intertrons by storm. I think it looks pretty neat.

If you're not in the Louisville area, you're probably better off waiting until this hits the net at large in April. If you are in Louisville, odds are you already know about this and are going, in which case I'll see you there. If not, well then, shame on you, you jerk.

Happy Halloweeeeenalmostbutnotquite

2007-10-29T07:28:51Z

So, the old live journal. Seems to be falling into... a bit of dis-use? And hey... I got a good... two of those requests done before vanishing from livejournal land. So that's good. I might get back on them at some point.

But between then and now I have graduated from college, moved home, dealt with nice family drama, went to a contest in California, and started work on my first sort of "freelance" animationy directory type... deal.

Yeah, I'm directing a thing. No, it's not Little Kitty Jam Jams. I'm actually not sure if we're allowed to talk about it before it's done, so I won't go into details, but most of you probably know exactly what I'm talking about anyway.

So, just to show that I'm alive, I'm gonna stick a screenshot from it up here. It's sort of pretty, and does not actually give very much away.

So yeah, we're fine. Everything's Fine. We're all fine here. Now. How are you?

Yub yub.

2007-04-10T00:53:44Z

Requested by blueeyedgirl519

I almost didn't do this one because I was all "ugh, Star Wars? Really?" But then I thought about how Ewoks have no idea how to drive anything at all, and how delightfully suicidal they are, so I went ahead and got it out of the way anyway. I doodled this in pencil, and it is colored entirely in Flash.

Keep the requests coming! I'm going to try to put one up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but we'll see how that goes. And just so you know, I'm not doing any more Star Wars. Unless it's really really cool / funny.

The Scottish Centaur!

2007-04-06T18:18:11Z

Requested by larnsturt.

I was going to actually draw him holding a caber and drinking whiskey, but it would have looked stupid. Trust me when I say that this centaur is doing it in his heart, and as often as possible in his free time. When he's not busy being freaked out by his own chest hair and nipples.

BONUS!
Comment, in quotes, with what you imagine a Scottish Centaur would scream in alarm! You have to phonetically spell out his horrible accent, or it doesn't count!

Free Art, anyone?

2007-04-06T02:33:09Z

Commission Post!

I am taking Commissions for art. Right here, right now.

You do not have to pay for this art (So I guess they aren't really commissions. Hm). I need to pad out my portfolio, and have decided, for kicks, to draw things, for you. Even if I don't know you. You don't even have to have a livejournal account.

Just post here and ask me to draw something, and I will draw it! Cartoony, realistic, rendered, architectural, comic-panels, animated gifs, whatever. I am going to select whatever requests are cool, and I'm going to try to do one a day every day starting tomorrow, Friday, until I run out of good requests. Bring it!

The faintest of conditions! If you request something exorbitantly complicated or ridiculous I probably won't do it (unless nobody else requests anything). I will do Fan Art, but only if I'm actually a Fan of the thing in question, and would rather it not be the bulk of what I do as I am looking for more original, portfolio stuff. So feel free to request it, just know it's gonna fall lower on the priorities of what I do. If you want a comic keep it to 4 panels maximum, if you want an animated gif, make it a loop. Don't post any scripts here. Animation fun comes later.

Everything else is fair game! Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! I will try my best not to suck.

Hey there, baby. Did you miss me?

2007-03-04T23:09:47Z

So yeah. Remember these guys? I haven't drawn them, especially in any context in about 2-3 years.

So I figure, what better way to see if I'm improving than try drawing them again? Only I actually have defined backstories for the characters, and have pushed their styles more than they used to be pushed.

I'd thought this was what I was doing all along, but I wasn't very good at it. Pictures behind the cut.

New styles! See if you can guess who's based on which styles.

Jade gets her own revision page because I kinda scrunched her onto the page and, after thinking about it, I decided I wanted to keep her tall and skinny. I may do more characters / revise the ones that are here similarly. Let me know what you think? Is this cool, or am I doing a terrible thing?

Li'l Kitty Dance Dance

2007-02-12T16:08:15Z

I have no idea what this is, but it's really fun.

Oh good, Star Wars.

2007-01-24T13:09:13Z

From now on, I'm only posting Art here. If you want to read amusing (boring) anecdotes about me personally, go to the new Will White journal!

So here's some art.

Trying some new junk in photoshop. These are storyboards for my advanced storyboarding class. I did 10 of them, but the other 8 aren't totally done yet. If people like these I'll stick up the rest of them when they're done.

And yes, it's a brief scene set in the Star Wars universe. I was assigned "actors" (and yes I HAD to do Star Wars) but otherwise got to make up whatever I want for the story. That's supposed to be Daniel Craig (the new James Bond) but real people are super tricky to draw, dudes.

To Double-Oh Seven

2007-01-07T07:39:25Z

Happy New Year!

There are several matters for discussion.

I came down to SCAD a week early for New Years party times with Cari, which was great, but then afterwards there was no internet in the dorms. There's... actually still not official internet here, but other people have moved in now, and fortunately there are some schmucks who have their own internet AND a wireless router AND don't bother to password protect it, so I've beaten the system slightly early. Did you miss me?

This, coupled with the fact that no one has been here, has forced me to actually be productive. For the first time since I started the Senior Project it's actually marginally ahead of schedule! Hopefully it can push moreso, rather than getting put off for other classes and/or video games.

For Christmas I got several nice things, but most prominently a new bicycle from my father. I haven't ridden a bike since probably middle school (but it came back to me like, well, you know) and my New Years resolution is to actually ride it to most of my classes. This should make me the healthiest boy, so watch out, everybody else!

Mostly, my classes this term are, for the first time, all on the same day. I have classes all day from 8 am to 7:30 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, but no classes at any other point. What does that mean? Four day weekends. Every week.

A lot of people swear by this schedule, but I've been avoiding it because I wasn't sure if I'd be disciplined enough to make proper homework usage of the off days.

But I hope I do, if only because I really really want to get this animated thingy done. Because I keep having other ideas for shorts and characters and settings at a rate that I don't think I've ever had going before, and I'd feel like I was betraying the current project if I started developing another one before I've even barely scratced its surface.

And that's kinda what it feels like.
Ah well. Onward!

P.S. I saw "Children of Men" last night with Spencer and the Goils, if anybody's interested I'll talk about it in the comments, but let's just say it's a candidate for Sad Movie / Happy Movie Night. A really enjoyable flick, but not one I'll watch again casually very soon.

P.P.S. I was only half paying attention to the synopsis of the movie Cari gave me and, from the title, assumed the plot was going to be similar to that of "Nine Months". I almost asked the ticket booth chick for two tickets to "Man Babies". Fortunately, I did not do this.

eRagon

2006-12-11T04:42:48Z

Does anybody else wish "Eragon" was just a movie about dragons on the internet?

I think I would rather see that movie.

That's it! I'm outta here.

2006-11-22T14:25:58Z

Another term bites the dust. I only have two of these things left until I have a college degree. How scary is that?

For some reason this one was particularly taxing. Hopefully the next one will be less so.

Gonna try to get some mondo piles of work done over break on the ol' senior project. Here's a screengrab for anybody who's interested, but that I haven't been nagging constantly to look at (probably not very many of you).

Check that out. I know, right? My layout artist (Joe), and background painters (Whitney and Yael) are doing a ridiculously good job. I better pick up the pace on the animation or they're going to make me look bad!

At any rate,
ATTENTION: People of Kentucky, I am about to hit the state rolling! In... in a car, I mean, I'm not jumping out of it or anything. That would be intense.

Happy Thanksgiving if I don't see you, but I had better see you.

Not dead, just busy

2006-11-10T06:31:13Z

That post is too long and has been up for even longer! Here's some art from school stuffs.

I had to make an action squad, and this might or might not double as design work for Jam Jams. Regardless, I tried to push some of my design stuff a little bit. You probably can't tell, but I really sweated and strained over that stupid girl, and I'm still not really happy with how it came out. Woman styles are tough, man.

I'm gonna start posting more random little things like this, I think. Term's almost over, yay!

My hump my hump my hump!

2006-08-25T05:01:24Z

Storyboard pitch: Completed!

Initial Reactions: Totally unexpected! Whoooooaaah (holy craaap).

Right. So. Here's what happened.

After some drama regarding my internet being a butt this morning, I successfully panicked and got my lovely assistant Lisa to come to my rescue at the last minute (by calling on her lovely assistant, Scott, who e-mailed me the PowerPoint that Lisa had so lovingly helped me put together in days prior).

In the 10-15 minutes I had left before I was supposed to start officially setting up, I succesfully drove to
work, made copies (of all 107 or so pages), scanned the last 5 pages, cut out the 10 panels I was missing from the older Powerpoint, put them in, added an "End" page, e-mailed it to myself, ran downstairs, downloaded it, and pinned 107 copies of said storyboards to the main conference room wall, which apparently was enough to succesfully cover almost the entire wall. I only started about 5 minutes late.

At some point there I think I had a glass of water, and I think that's still most of what I've had to eat today.

I then proceeded to give my pitch on a veeeeeery big screen TV (seriously, this was bigger than I am). Like, 40", at least, freakin' plasma touch screen, so that when I wanted to go to the next panel all I had to do was walk up and touch it. It was like I had changed my first name to "Vanna". The pitch went pretty well. I apparently didn't quite pitch it right for an "action" pitch (I've never seen one of those before! I didn't know they were different!) Allegedly I over-explained stuff some, and it got a bit bogged down in places, but on the whole everybody "got" it.

As a result there was very, very little actual commentary or critique on the short! "Looks pretty okay" was the consensus, which is fine and dandy, but kind of frustrating when you've just spent the last two weeks drawing it. But still, I've just cleared my first really big production hump.

So did everybody just leave? Not at all! In waiting for people to file in, Ezzie had suggested I show everybody my trailer to kick them off, which I did gladly, and explained that the short was part of a concept for this little series I'm working on. Whoa! Everybody was much, much, much more interested in that. So 95% of the questions I got were suddenly a huge number of extremely hard-hitting questions about this action comedy series I've had brewing.

And man! What a wakeup call.

It was really sobering to realize, as well thought through as I thought these beginning phases had been, I've still got a long way to go. It's like...

There I was, clearing this hump. And suddenly I was right there at the top of it!

I had a moment of clarity.

From the top of my hump, I could see the enormous number of humps playing out before me, each waiting in turn with glee for me to run up against it and try to scramble over.

"Shit."

But I fielded the questions pretty well, and everybody seemed fairly pleased with me. The huge consensus was that it's a great start, and I've really got something here. But we need to keep going. The story needs some overhauling still. My art still needs some major overhauling.

Furthermore I've got a week to do any revisions before I suddenly won't have access to their glorious executive copy supplies, and making my own versions of things will suddenly be expensive again rather than free. Crap. I also have to turn that all into an animatic before I have to go home, and then go to school, and suddenly find myself in the middle of production hell!

Why oh why does SCAD make us handle every aspect of the production? Okay, scratch that, I understand why. It just sucks to have to actually go through all the more tedious bits of it.

Ah well! In I go, head first, goggles on.

Only 2 weeks left.

2006-08-18T06:38:42Z

My internship is nearly drawing to a close. In less than a week I'm going to be pitching my storyboard for an animated short in the main conference room of Cartoon Network Studios. I've drawn about 100 storyboard panels so far, but I need to at least double that number, preferably over this weekend. You know what that means.

In other news, the first Intern pitches for Summer 2006 happened today, and I got to sit in on the session; we watched two of them. They were..... well, really, really, kind of awful. The stories were uninspired, uninteresting, inexperienced, and just generally poorly executed. And yet never have I heard a room so full of people looking desperately for something nice to say.

Granted, the meetings got rescheduled to a very awkward hour (5:00 PM? Everybody's ready to just leave early at that point), so the student-to-professional-artist ratio was perhaps not what it should have been, but I dipped my toe into the waters of "scathing critique" but nobody else showed signs of wanting to jump in so I mostly let it be.

I just hope that I can figure out how to be taken a little more seriously than your average intern. This is it, kids. Wish me luck.

I'm stealing a gimmick from Brendan.

2006-08-11T21:02:57Z

Overheard in the cubicle next to mine:

"Did you want this guy to be made out of lava? Or to just shoot lava?"

Was an honest question.

Li'l Kitty Pitch Pitch

2006-08-04T21:47:54Z

Hey, remember this guy?

I'm storyboarding a short animation, just like the professionals do! No more notecards for me, thanks! The Ninja short is officially being replaced by a Li'l Kitty Jam Jams short as what I'm going to try to do for my senior project, even though it will be much longer and probably much more complicated, and I've only got until... August 24th to do all the drawings for it. Ideally I'll have an animatic done before school starts!

But yeah, on the 24th I'm going to be doing a Storyboard Pitch in Cartoon Network's main conference room. And before that, next week, I'm going to finally get to talk to the development department. (I was supposed to talk to them yesterday, actually, but the meeting got post-poned thanks to unexpected Conference Calls and Jury Duty). Unfortunately nobody told me it was being post-poned until I was already there dressed up with a stack of print-outs ready to go.

But it's cool!

I have another week to get ready.

I'm posting this more for myself than anything, but I figure if anybody in internetland is interested... uh....that's... that's what I'm tryin' to do.

So watch this space, and I'll tell you all about how quickly I get shot down, or possibly about a cool cartoon involving adorable kittens and ladybugs and giant world-destroying steam-punk robots.

Double-you.

2006-07-18T17:06:12Z

"W"

Is the twenty-third letter of the alphabet.

This is the first letter of both of my names, and has always held some significance for me. Recently it's received scorn by being attributed with a political icon that people seem to not like very much, but it's okay, W. You're still tops with me. #23.

By coincidence, today is my 23rd birthday, it's my year of the W. In this year of my life I'm going to finally graduate from college, and probably make a lot of really big decisions regarding my future. It doesn't have any of the official significance that 18 or 21 seem to carry, but I think I like this one the most just for personal reasons.

I haven't told anybody at the office, nor do I plan to. I don't really plan on doing anything to celebrate at all, actually, largely because I'm a couple thousand miles from most of the people who are dear to me. But then I've never been one for Birthday fuss regardless.

Comicon's this weekend, though, and I'm going to be seeing a lot of cool people there, from SCAD, from the internet, from my dreams.

Anyway, so far it looks like this should be a good year.

Oh no, it's a Cartoon Network update.

2006-07-13T07:33:53Z

Being an intern is not a very good job.

Okay, technically? Not really a job, because they're not paying me. It's a volunteer gig that I'm paying a lot of money to get to do (what with moving across the country and tuition fees and this and that), but fortunately I can make due living in a stranger's living room for several months and surviving off stolen internet, zero television, and a lot of sandwiches, spaghetti, and pop-tarts stolen from the CN snack room.

Actually the snack room is pretty fantastic.

It's weird, because every job has its ups and downs, but here the line seems to be between the barest depths of tedium and then just the utmost realms of Total Awesome, but then even that is shifted by... well... the fact that I'm working at Cartoon Network. And I haven't even been talking about it. Let's go through what goes down.

Copies.
Filing.
Rudimentary Photoshop Cleanup that is actually just Digital Filing in disguise.
Scanning.
Did I mention copies?

The Xerox Nuvera 100 is completely amazing, I know it in and out like no man should ever know a copy machine. This is seemingly much to the chagrin of Vicki, an elderly woman whose permanent jobs seems to be doing the things tjat I enjoy the least. I don't think she enjoys them either judging by sounds of her swears echoing throughout the mail room. I was going to do some little mini-comics about me being an intern with actual cartoon characters working there, and the copy machine was going to punch me in the face, but it would've been pretty lame so I'll spare you. Honestly, the thing can scan 300+ pages of storyboards automatically in a few minutes, copy them, and save the whole deal onto a cd simultaneously so I just praise God that it exists because doing it the hard way would have driven me insane by now.

And that's, like, 80-90% of the job. They gave me a storyboard test and a digital painting test, pictured above (click for high rez), and while everybody seems pretty positive of the work I did on them, I'm not actually allowed to do any "real" production art work on Ben10. Why? Because of unions. Actually today I even asked Kris, who directs most of the vocal talent, about Voice Acting for shows, and there are even more rules regarding that. You have to be in the Screen Actors Guild (Strike 1). You can't work on the show (aaaah, Strike 2). And you have to be good (I cringed a little at this one, but I... I could be good. You don't know. Shut up!)

But wait, you can't work on the show? Apparently, at least with Cartoon Network, there are certain jobs that can do voices, and other jobs that can't. Creators get to do whatever they want. Interns get to... okay, I get to watch the voice actors and make silly faces at them while I doodle and learn how to transcribe circle takes. That's kind of a lot of fun. So it's complicated. Shows like South Park get to have whatever voice actors they want, though, because they're non-union. Mostly it looks like I'm going to eventually get stuck in a lot of unions. Ho boy.

Ah, but that's it? 12 weeks of making copies?! That's what you do? Well.... if you're a lot of interns, yeah, that's it. BUT! But. I have a plan, and... okay it's been going kinda slowly, but part of our internship is that we get to have our own pitch session and invite anyone in the company we want to go see it. This was very exciting, but details on it were kind of danced around every time I asked about it, but I've finally discerned that.... the main intern pitch is actually "just for practice".

Practice!

I've... okay, you can never have enough practice, but I'm kind of... kind of itching to get into the real deal.
So!
I twisted Ezzie's arm (internship coordinator)(I actually didn't literally twist her arm), and she's agreed to help me set up an actual, for-real developer's pitch session, where I get to talk to the development department about for real maybe getting to do a series. Talking. Talking is a start! Might lead nowhere, not getting my hopes up. Regardless, Unfan, Lisa and I have been conspiring to put together a concept for a 5-6 minute Li'l Kitty Jam Jams short which... is probably going to supplant the Ninja-Cake "Challenge!" Idea. Sorry everybody. I'm actually going to keep the details of that under wraps until they're further along, though. In the meantime, here is a robot.

I also have a cool Cartoon Network coffee mug and a few free t-shirts. The swag count will increase weekend after next, when I go with them to the San Diego Comicon and work at their booth.
WHAAAT?

YES.

GASP.

TO BE CONTINUED.

What! What.

2006-06-30T03:38:28Z

I'm going to talk about Cartoon Network, I promise, but not right now.

Today I sadly had to say goodbye to Ian and moved into my new place, which is actually a 1 bedroom that somebody else lives in, but they are more of a cave dweller than even I. So... I get the big living room area, which makes it more like I have a studio apartment to myself that somebody else occasionally appears in. It's a chick, her name is Leah, and she seems really nice, so we are probably going to be cool.

But she's never here, so there's no food in the place, so I do a quick grocery store run. No problem! There's one just a couple blocks away. I almost got some real stuff, but was feeling lazy, so I grab some hotpockets™ and the usual "easy stuff". Get home, get ready to dig in and...

the... there... there's no microwave. We have a stove and and oven and a fridge and all that but no microwave. I'm currently baking hot pockets. In an oven. It takes half an hour.

I'm going to have to learn how to actually cook. Son of a bitch!

DING DING DING

2006-06-01T20:21:27Z

Year three is in the bag.

I actually had senior standing at the beginning of this past term, but there are now three physical years of SCAD under my belt. Makes it pretty official, I only have one year of this stuff to go.

Oh, crap, I'm going to reminisce for a bit. I'll cut it for those of you who don't want to be bored to tears. It's really weird looking at this stuff in retrospect and all that. A few years back I was working at Toys R Us, which I might have stayed at except that, for a lark, I tried out for a play (The Odyssey) with the Lexington Children's Theater. I landed the lead, which was some decent confidence building after a disappointing time at UK, and it brought me back into the arts. But! It was probably the worst play I have ever been in, and that's saying a lot, so it's kind of embarassing to speak of Mainly, it got me out of my retail job and force me to think of other stuff to do with my life. I decided it was probably college time again, but I have a really nasty habbit of not applying to enough places. I looked at Berea, who rejected me pretty quickly, but then SCAD was like "yeah, hey, okay, c'mon". I basically got really lucky.

Here we are three years later, and I'm doing a little better at looking forward to the next step. But once again, regarding internships I applied to very few places (basically just Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network). Nickelodeon rejected me pretty quickly, but once again, I've gotten really really lucky, and so I'm frantically packing to spend pretty much my entire summer on the West Coast. Dang. In both situations I've, almost accidentally, landed in what is probably the better option (for me) of the two. Maybe it's some kind of karma for past things that have sucked, maybe it's because I've been working hard, or maybe there's some kind of Guardian Angel looking out for me, because at the moment things are going really, really well. It's pretty awesome. Whatever's going on: Thanks. I am knocking on so many pieces of wood that it continues.

Now, KENTUCKY, hey! I am going to be inside of you, but very very very briefly. I will be leaving Georgia promptly tomorrow morning, so I'll be there sometime tomorrow late in the evening. If any of you guys in that vicinity want to hang out for a brief period over the weekend, I would like to try, but I don't know how well it'll work because I might be leaving for Hollywood-land as early as Monday-ish. Yikes. That is insane.

Ian: I am going to get to hang out with you soon and that is awesome. Everybody else: I am going to miss you.

This is a sketch journal. Um. I don't have time to draw anything because I'm packing! Crap!

...

Boom?

There, I feel better now. Man, sorry that isn't even complete. I'm totally going to do all kinds of junk this summer. It is exciting like a whoa. Thanks to all of you guys who are full of nothing but support. You're the best.

Hi. Hello. Hey. Hi.

2006-05-23T18:48:05Z

I have not posted in a while! I have been intentionally not talking about this, because I did not want to jinx it. But now that is impossible!

I am going to be spending most of this Summer interning at Cartoon Network, it has been officially confirmed. More on this later, I still have classes to go to today apparently, but am very excited and prone to poor decisions involving the internet in such a situation. Details to follow later.

Meep Meep.

2006-04-19T12:44:39Z

So I was going to do Dr. Zoidberg for my thing, since everyone seemed I nailed his style down closer than anybody elses, and he's still relatively well known (surprisingly!) But then I sat down to actually do it and couldn't find any references (and I didn't feel like going through my Futurama DVDs to find exacting reference pics). So! Desperation and laziness led to a mental dartboard, and my gut said "uh.... ... ROADRUNNER." So I'm doing a Loony Tunes character. If this were a contest, I guess the award would go out to Blogtronic. Congratulations! You were closest without going over. Here's a very sketchy model sheet.

This is also the first update I've made not from my computer in, like, a year! I went over to the library to print out an Anthropology paper, and I got it done a little early, so I had time to fart around on Livejournal before class. Totally bizarro. In other news, I have a meeting with the head of SCAD's animation department in a few hours, and he's going to review my reel and portfolio. Immediately afterwards, I will be turning them into Pixar, who I guess is in town. Odds are they will both hate both things. Crap. Oh well!

Bam!

2006-04-13T00:05:31Z

I'm actually sketching in my SketchJournal. Whoa. Hang on to your butts!

You guys made a lot of suggestions! I drew several of them, but not all of them. If I didn't draw something you reeeaally wanted you can put up a fuss and I'll probably go back in and do it. But for now: drawing in other people's styles is hard!

Here's some Disney, kinda. Nobody requested it, but I had some stuff lying around, and did most of this in class instead of paying attention to lectures. Captain Hook and... that one Guard dude (who apparently was designed by my current animation prof), and a hand in the style of The Sword in the Stone. Woo.

Brendan is in love with Batman, you see. And yet, I am bad at drawing him. Batman. Not Brendan.

I... actually tried to draw the tick around that infernal oval, so it didn't turn out the best. Sam and Max are fun, though.

Zoidberg and Penfold are in a panic!

Chuck Jones styled Daffy? Oh yes, please.

Cockpits! Booby traps!

Ugh, that was a lot of drawing. I should draw that much more often, though, it's kind of a lot of fun.

April?!

2006-04-10T21:17:04Z

Hey, so things have been happening. Lisa came down to visit a little while back, we went to Disneyworld, and I got shot in the chest, leg, and hand by what appeared at the time to be bullets (they weren't). I was going to talk about these things at length, but then I didn't.

Here's an informal poll that I would like everybody to answer! What is your favorite cartoon character? Don't say anything I've created, like... famous cartoon character. Don't say Mickey Mouse. But in his genre. You gotta like somebody! EDIT: I should mention this is for class, I am going to do a model sheet and animate a scene based on an established, studio character. It can be absolutely anybody, and I really don't care, except in that it should be a character with a lot of personality because that is a good challenge apparently.

Okay. Change of plans.

2006-03-05T06:44:47Z

So, I'm probably going to go back to my roots a bit here. I was going to do this Senior thing fully in 3D, but I was talking with my friend Zach, and apparently so far at SCAD nobody has really done any kind of 2D - 3D heavily combined stuff. Plus.... I just.... like it better. So I think I'm gonna do it. Here, check this out actually, d00ds.

This is not 3D at all, it's just a drawing I did in photoshop. In theory, the environment would be cel-shaded 3D, with actually probably layered 2D effects to create some of the shading and floor reflections. The Ninja would probably be partially 3D, but probably traced over heavily, or even just straight up animated from scratch in 2D to make sure he retains some style and elasticity (3D tends to get waaay too stiff, way too easily). So that the end result would look like this, but I could still do cool camera pans and zooms believably.

Do you guys think this would look cool / better than attempting realism? I'm probably really bad at realism. Plus I'd be able to do fire / water / dough / special effects in 2D, which honestly, will be a lot easier to do and not have them look out of place then me trying to learn Maya effects from scratch. Feedbaaaaack is appreciated!

I'm probably freaking out over this way too much, I know. I know. Blame Finals. Our terms are too short and intense. Rargh!