Fatbat Art/Flash stuff

Qwazin · December 25, 2006 01:27 PM

I've probably linked to this a billion (or two) times on forums but I haven't really made anything new in a while.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/287885 - Heres a flash animation I finished in early January last year. Wow I haven't finished any proper animation in a year. D: But yeah. This is probably the only movie I've made that I still think has some quality to it, although I find it kinda corny now, haha.

And heres some drawings I did of the characters from the animation

I really need to work more on poses. And just... draw more.

And thats pretty much all the art I can think of putting here. I hope you like it.

Monk_09 · December 27, 2006 12:27 AM

The drawings look really neat. Nice job!

rtil · December 27, 2006 09:21 AM

colors are nice and the graphics are clean but yes the poses need work. they feel really disjointed. when are you actually going to make an episode of fatbat? gerkin always talks about how great you are and all i've ever seen is the intro. it'd be great to see how far you have come since then, i think you might be surprised even though you may have not animated in some time.

Qwazin · December 28, 2006 02:10 AM

Yeah I think I need to work more on drawing entire characters instead of just faces. That way I should probably get better at poses. I didn't know you talked to Gman, haha. I think he might exagurate things a bit, I dunno XD I'm proud over the stuff I did in the intro, since it was all pretty much a test so I could see how well I could handle fbf and photoshop effects. Now that I'm making a proper episode I need to try and find a way to work faster and add a proper storyline without having to deprove the animation from what it was in the intro. Since I've pretty much redone the style of the toon I need to make a new intro aswell (I'm kinda tired of the old one anyway). So right now I'm animating the new intro aswell as the credits sequence while I'm trying to finish the script wich so far has a begining/end but no middle. I've been really lazy with this thing, but hopefully I can get some serious work done now that I've got a tablet (xmas w000). Just have to get used to this thing, lol. I might post my progress on the intro/credits here on the forums sometime so I can get some critique on it.

I'm glad to hear someone actually wants to see it though, I think motivation is just what I need XD

Zaeon · December 29, 2006 03:42 AM

the coloring effects are quite advanced but the drawings themselves need a little bit of work

Qwazin · December 29, 2006 03:35 PM

Anything special you think I might need improvement on? Thicker/thinner outlines, better anatomy, more details maybe? It'd be cool if you could point out what you think is the weakest part of the drawing so I can try and improve it XD

Zaeon · December 29, 2006 03:37 PM

yessir

generally it's just the anatomy. the artwork itself is very detailed but some of them don't look human. otherwise they're splendid

KingDavid · December 30, 2006 04:18 AM

Wow, nice job! I like the animated characters better than the still characters

Can't wait till your next "proper" animation. I may have seen this back in January. It seemed familiar when I watched it.

rtil · December 30, 2006 06:08 AM

Quote from: QwazinYeah I think I need to work more on drawing entire characters instead of just faces. That way I should probably get better at poses. I didn't know you talked to Gman, haha. I think he might exagurate things a bit, I dunno XD I'm proud over the stuff I did in the intro, since it was all pretty much a test so I could see how well I could handle fbf and photoshop effects. Now that I'm making a proper episode I need to try and find a way to work faster and add a proper storyline without having to deprove the animation from what it was in the intro. Since I've pretty much redone the style of the toon I need to make a new intro aswell (I'm kinda tired of the old one anyway). So right now I'm animating the new intro aswell as the credits sequence while I'm trying to finish the script wich so far has a begining/end but no middle. I've been really lazy with this thing, but hopefully I can get some serious work done now that I've got a tablet (xmas w000). Just have to get used to this thing, lol. I might post my progress on the intro/credits here on the forums sometime so I can get some critique on it.

I'm glad to hear someone actually wants to see it though, I think motivation is just what I need XD

yeah, gerkin was introduced to me through renner/zhicago. she told me that he wanted to talk to me while she was talking to him, so i said to her why not have him add me so he did and there we went. i don't see him online often since we're on different time schedules. but yeah, he talks good stuff about you.

as far as animating i'd say cut back on the effects. while they do look nice on some computers, for the general population they slow down animations and you end up dropping many precious frames you spent time drawing. you can emulate effects through clever animation instead of having to use them. if you must, then set the quality to low or auto while they are on-screen. also, the most brilliant animators (i say brilliant, not psychotic like Richard Williams) are wonderful at creating shortcuts in animation. that's right, shortcuts.

in warner bros' prime, they were pumping out a bugs bunny/merry melody cartoon every 2 weeks. that's right. and you know how? they mixed their great animation abilities with the right camera moves. i see a lot of animators today spend 2-3 weeks working on walk and run cycles and then finding as they animate they have no use for them and either slap them in and they don't look in place or they trash them altogether. if you don't need to show the legs, then don't show them! you're saving yourself a ton of work in the physics and movement of the legs. think ahead about your scenes before you animate them. what do you need to show? what is the most important aspect of the animation ahead of you? if you think about these things, you can work as fast as the animators at warner bros did 30-40 years ago.

Qwazin · February 14, 2007 06:28 PM

Quote from: rtilyeah, gerkin was introduced to me through renner/zhicago. she told me that he wanted to talk to me while she was talking to him, so i said to her why not have him add me so he did and there we went. i don't see him online often since we're on different time schedules. but yeah, he talks good stuff about you.

as far as animating i'd say cut back on the effects. while they do look nice on some computers, for the general population they slow down animations and you end up dropping many precious frames you spent time drawing. you can emulate effects through clever animation instead of having to use them. if you must, then set the quality to low or auto while they are on-screen. also, the most brilliant animators (i say brilliant, not psychotic like Richard Williams) are wonderful at creating shortcuts in animation. that's right, shortcuts.

in warner bros' prime, they were pumping out a bugs bunny/merry melody cartoon every 2 weeks. that's right. and you know how? they mixed their great animation abilities with the right camera moves. i see a lot of animators today spend 2-3 weeks working on walk and run cycles and then finding as they animate they have no use for them and either slap them in and they don't look in place or they trash them altogether. if you don't need to show the legs, then don't show them! you're saving yourself a ton of work in the physics and movement of the legs. think ahead about your scenes before you animate them. what do you need to show? what is the most important aspect of the animation ahead of you? if you think about these things, you can work as fast as the animators at warner bros did 30-40 years ago.

Agagagaga I need to post on this forum more often. Thanks for the advice and stuff. I've always ended up getting stuck on walk cycles actually. Shortcuts sounds like a pretty good idea. I just hope I don't end up using too many shortcuts (tweens) and make my animation look crappy and lazy.

As for Fatbat, looks like I'm gonna be delaying it again. After reading through John K's blog, resulting in me getting back into old Looney Tunes cartoons and stuff, I've decided to redo Fatbat again and give it a much more cartoony/comic-book-ish feel. Right now I'm also working on a remake of Kyle The Amazing Robot. (That crappy random movie on my Sheezy account) I've given myself the challenge to try and make it like a proper toon with storyboards and scripts and concept designs and all that (since I rarely do that otherwise). I started a blog too where I try and update what I've done on the toon and not. Hopefully that'll keep my motivation going so I can actually finish something.