When you think of hand costumes, think of me

I think it was back in '72 when my business partner and I sewed together our first hand costume. It was crude, of course, but it not only gave the illusion that the wearer was a giant hand... but was quite comfortable as it was made from kitten skin. It was really the only thing we found that was soft enough besides baby seal, but thats just fucked up to kill a baby seal. If I catch anyone killing a baby fucking seal, I'll rape them so fast.

Anyway, our overhead was pretty low, considering that we could just find the kittens on the street. Oftentimes, we could lure them out through internet chatrooms. We would have entire nights devoted to roaming the city streets, scanning internet chat rooms, looking for baby kitties. Sometimes we wouldn't find any; sometimes we'd find a boatload. Sometimes it was awesome, we would find the kitten already dead. That way, we wouldn't have to bludgeon it ourselves. We bludgeoned them because we didn't want any bullet holes or knife marks on our hand costumes, as that would deter prospective hand costume buyers.

The trouble came when the unthinkable happened. The trend caught on. Almost overnight everyone and everybody's dad wanted one of these things; orders were piling up faster than we could produce. We couldn't possibly find all the kittens we needed for all these coats. No, it was time to move onto something that was equally as soft, but more abundant... something that we could re-produce in our own backyard with little to no effort. Thats how we moved on to baby bunnies.

Baby bunnies are a lot harder to catch that kittens. Most kittens are pretty trusting and will walk right into your arms, making the kill a little easier, albeit a little less rewarding. No, the bunnies we'd have to chase. Sometimes it was easier to just break their neck than to hit them with blunt objects, so you didn't have to loosen your grip once you caught them.

Yes, those were good times. That was until my partner grew hungry for more.

THE END

...or is it?

Eff it

I was supremely bored last night and decided to make this trailer. I figure that proof is in the pudding.


Stan, Satan, and the Old Fashioned Gun Trailer

Production Blog #16000074

A lot of progress has been made this week. After officially starting the project at the tail end of July, the ideas and artistic styles have mutated so much and are finally starting to take hold and lay foundation for the rest of the story and visuals to come. So far, everything I have done(which isn't 100% in order) clocks in at over 12 minutes; which doesn't sound like a lot until you think about the effort it goes into each shot. The longest single shot is about 1:45, without the camera moving. A shot like that takes 2-3 hours of animation (that includes lip-syncing), and about 3 hours just to encode into actual video. Of course, this isn't counting the time it takes to write and record it. And that's just one shot- within a scene comprised of many shots.


The story takes aspects that are already familiar to the Stan, Satan, and the Old Fashioned Gun universe(http://oldfashionedgun.smackjeeves.com). The cops, Frank and Marty, play an integral part... especially Marty, as we watch his life spiral out of control and take a nose-dive.


Some major characters I have yet to include, such as Rochester and The Old Man With No Eyes (although each make a brief appearance), but I'm simply waiting for the right time. At the start of the comic there were just Stan and Satan; the other characters came later. That seemed to work well for everyone and I you never feel like anyone gets left behind.


When I was originally designing the art style of the project, I wanted each frame to be hand painted with a white ink border after the inking process. The process was just way to expensive and time consuming... so instead I just went with a single black border. The intent was always to have color be a huge factor, for each character to be composed of one or two colors each. That's expanded to maybe 3 colors each, but everything is very simple and colorful. The backgrounds are drawn, inked, and scanned into photoshop where I color them with varying layers and opaque brushes to make it seem almost painted. Some come out better than others.


Each scene has it's own color scheme. A barn scene is composed mostly reds and black. In stans house, everything is greenish. The scene in the opera house is all deep reds. Color is a huge part of recognition in the human brain, so my goal is to have everything memorable and have a cetain feel to it, sometimes even nastolgic.

These two shots on top and bottom of this paragraph is in example of getting caught re-using a background for different scenes. It may not look the same, but the top is a far more contrasted and has higher levels of color than it's brother below. I never said I didn't cut corners. Hell, I've even used a lip set from Lunchbox Duck Does it Right episode 2.
Most of the animation is uncomplicated and easy. I'm going to rely on the drawings, the style, and audio content to deliver the story. The lips sync, and people will move their arms and eyes and stuff like that, but don't expect anything above, say, South Park in terms of realistic animation and movement.

This sequence above with Stan and Marty was a challenge in that it needed to have many camera angles, and each drawing had to have 2 versions- a normal one, and one with light cast on it. When moved very fast, it gives the illusion of gunfire.


Above here is another instance of cutting corners. I realized I hadn't made a background for behind Frank and Marty, so I stole one from myself from the opening scene in the second episode of Lunchbox Duck. it sort of sticks out as it has more colors than anything else in the scene.
I'm sort of running out of things to say.

I show pictures and not final product for a few reasons. One is that I don't feel like anything is final. There are still little SFX that are missing, and a few of the vocal tracks need to be edited to not include breath hitting the mocrophone. Another reason is I don't want to be ripped off. Not that I really think people are watching me waiting to take my ideas, but it would suck. The other reason is I just like being mysterious. Someday I will show you some video, but for now, you'll have to settle for that dance sequence that I put up on YouTube. (try a few posts down)

So there you have it. By Christmas I hope to have 30 minutes done. Maybe I'll compile a trailer or something then.

You Can't Spell "Progress" without "Coffee"

Busy lately; actually, not busy whatsoever, just stressful. The move from one job to another is taxing, especially when one job is about to end and the other job that hired you hasn't called you yet. And you worked 2 days this week because of the terrible turn the weather has taken. Also, somebody needs to realize that it is now cold outside and turn on the damn heat in my building.

Or maybe I should make sure my windows are closed before going to sleep.

Anyway, work on the project is good; I've hit my first (major) of many roadblocks in terms of story and character introduction balances- but it's back on track and the only thing hindering development is my own laziness.

I've been working on one hard scene, too. It doesn't have a number yet because I'm not sure how long it will take to get to this part of the story, but I'm simply referring to it as "Opera Scene". It's got a lot of tough camera angles and complex tones to it. It's one of the more story-driven scenes in the film, in contrast to the normal tomfoolery that you'll see.

So, enjoy these production screens, straight from the video editing process! (which means the colors are slightly lighter)
But I'm still having story troubles. Thats a good thing though, as the last thing I want to do is rush this; the animation and quality are limited already, I don't want the structure to fall in the same category- because thats the category that I hope will make this stand out in the long-run.

Stan, Satan, and the Old Fashioned Gun: Why You're Stoked and You Don't Even Know It.

In this day and age, everybody with a computer thinks they're special. I mean, just look at YouTube for example: I spend 7 months on a cartoon that over the course of 5 months gets just over 100 hits, where somebody can take a dump on an animal and get 2,000,000 in just under 5 min.

With the new modern technology that lets anybody in the world make their own media content and potentially reach millions of people comes the inevitable over saturation of fields that I've been interested my whole life; certainly before there was ever any internet. It almost makes it that much HARDER to get your stuff noticed, because there's an incredibly huge amount of shit to sift through and it's not hard to get lost or stuck in it's murkiness. These days, you have to do something either incredibly ambitious or totally stupid to get noticed. So I'm doing both.

I keep referring, in this space, to the "Stan, Satan, and the Old Fashioned Gun Project." I kept from labeling it anything other than "project" because I wasn't sure if my initial ambitions would still be clearly manifesting themselves 4 months after production started. Guess what: They are.

Thats why I've decided to attempt the impossible: Create the worlds first feature-length (animated) film done in full (except maybe some voice acting and music) by 1 person.

I'm doing this for a few reasons. One of the reasons is I can't tell the story I want to tell in less than an hour (which will probably end up being "feature length" enough for me). There's just too much to go over, and I don't want to make it feel rushed like I did with Lunchbox Duck Does it Right Episode II.

Another reason is the way I'm going about writing it. The entire film, while initially having a basic outline, is being written and created scene-by-scene. This is basically a measure I'm taking to make sure I don't get bored. If I were to do each step at a different time I would get bored and unmotivated. I have 2 or 3 scenes in production at any given time, it's just how I'm choosing to do it. The other reason I'm doing this is for freshness. I find that my best ideas are my initial thoughts and not ones that have had time to marinate over time... epically with a comedy in the vein as this. I want to keep it fresh for no only the audience, but myself.

So, this is a project. With everything I have so far, I's say I'm about 1/6 to 1/7 of the way completed. Not close, but not entirely ridiculous.

I will leave you with a previously un-released clip (unless you check my youtube site) thats been waiting to go to into final production for almost a month now. But here it is, about 95% done.

ooh, by the way... if you want to check out my other shit click HERE

We're going on a Dance ah-choo

Many of those sketches from last post are more than just random images shat out onto paper from my knuckles to your eyes; most of them serve a purpose. I like telling people that I have a fully functional animation studio in my apartment because not only was it expensive, but I use it quite often... that means that a majority of my ideas evolve from sketches and notes. Well, here are some of the work that has specifically been derived from those sketches.

^Some head. Experiment with photoshop techniques

^Another Photoshop test



^ Here's my mockup intro to a (now on hold) pilot show called Beasts of Lore





^Another Beasts of Lore test featuring one of the main characters, Gillard, a half man, half cow... man. Please notice the dirty-ass paper I was using and how terrible it makes everything look. This is a perfect example why I always test, test, TEST!

NEXT POST: Stan, Satan, and the Old Fashioned Gun and why you should be stoked and shitting in your jeans.

-Kev

Run.

^ Just a lazy-ass scan, wow.

^Few sketches and plot balloons. I don't know if "plot balloons" is a real term or not; perhaps I invented something glorious. Anyway, they're super helpful.