3 years!!!

Oh my god, It's been three years! I can't figure out what day in October it was, so I'll go with today. I'd like to thank the first person who commented on this blog, and inspired me to continue with this journey in cyber space. Come on down, Franco! Actually we had a rivited conversation on my first post (without any artwork on it). Yeah, that's right, he believed in me, even without seeing any artwork on the blog. How many of the rest of you readers can say that?

Franco: very nice blog!
My name is Franco Di Giacomo
Would it make fun for you,
to make money in the Internet?
(Income for Life!)
Yes?
NEW Business, see the GDI video
www-franco.blogspot.com

me: Would it make fun for you to learn correct English?
It's kind of hard to make a judgement on a first post on a blog, buddy.
Don't put crap like this on my blog!



Ah the memories...

The end of an Era

I know, I know, hold back those tears, my friends. We all know it would come to an end eventually. Just like rising prices in the housing and stock market, it had to end, right? The Wonder Pets series is over. (Well, technically, Nickelodeon could call at anytime and ask for another season, but they are kind of pushing it, what with everybody layed off right now.) Maybe later I'll write about the experience of my first job working on a animated television show from my perspective but I have to collect my thoughts on that. But here is a caricature of the Creative Director who was intrumental in designing the look of the show, Jennifer Oxley.




I'd like to include horror stories of her but in truth, I only met her briefly once and she seemed like a very cool person, so I am sorry.

And I found this while trying to put together my portfolio and copying old files, not sure what I did this for, or why I did this, seeing as how Pluto is my favorite character, but I did.

Free stuff!

Now that I have a little free time on my hands(read:unemployed), I've been reading alot. Books, you say? No although I do have time to finish reading "A thousand Splendid Suns" and a few other books that have nothing in common with one another except that they have all been halfway read by me. But I digress. I've been reading on what people think the next economic model is for online media. Seems like everybody's saying you should give your content away for free. Sounds crazy at first, actually, it still sounds crazy, so I got to do more research. But I guess the reasoning is that in the internet age, content can be reproduced infinity and the millionth copy is no less perfect than the original. That single fact drives the price of content to zero. Traditional media like books and dvds make money because there is only a limited number of them. Thus the price is dependent of the cost of the actual physical media on which the content resides. So you give away your content for free because it is infinite and get people to buy real items like t-shirts, autographs and other exclusive stuff.

The only downside I see (And I admittedly have to do some more research on the subject so I can fully grasp what these people are proposing) is now your profits aren't tied to the main product, it's tied to the secondary products you sell. Which means it's possible for more people to own your content than buy material goods from you. That wasn't possible in the old model since the material goods you sold contained the content, excluding piracy. Also while once the content is made it become infinite, making the content is a finite process, and cost money, which can only be recouped by the secondary products since you give the content away for free. Anyways these people know a hell of a lot more than me, so listen to them.



A discussion on the scarcity vs infinity model.
http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html
there is a lot of more good stuff on this website about technology

Here's one on how to make a living in comics through this model.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/09/what-newspaper-cartoonists-can-learn-from-web-comics273.html

here is one on the indy film making.
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/bill-mechanic-on-moguls-bad-decision-making/

I found this a long time ago that has a lot of good stuff about the changing media environment.
http://www.buzzmachine.com/

oh and this Pencil test blog, which is the greatest Idea ever!
http://www.penciltestdepot.com/

And I found most of this stuff through Keith Lango's blog and Mark Mayerson's blog. You can find them on my blog list, they have plenty of awesome animation related stuff on their blogs too.

So for all people that are like, I don't want to listen to Jodie's crazy ideas he just learned about on how the market works in the internet age. I didn't come to be brainwashed, I came for drawings, here is a logo I just did for someone. Plus, I personally would skip all that reading on account of the fact you can't just click on the web address, you have to copy and paste them.

No, that's no Patrick

Just some quick star animation for the end of a drive in commercial I did for one of my old Professors, Steve Stanchfield. I tied it down since it's going to be put onto cels, (Who uses those anymore?) and I don't know who's cleaning it up (I'd like to get the color version if it's good enough). That is all, now sit back, relax and enjoy. But sit back and relax first and then push play. Otherwise while your sitting back, it will already be over. It's kind of short.

Is that a 3d car done in Maya?

No, it's done in After Effects. Just playing around with 3d layers and some effects, not sure where this is or why that guy continues to drive around in circles but that's what happens. (This blogger version doesn't do it justice though quality wise. oh well.)

Actually I lied...

I did use Toon Boom professionally to color something once a while back for a short I helped out on, by Glen Parsons, called "The Chicken". The sweet thing about the coloring process is if you change, say the color of the tie from red to blue, it will change on every drawing that uses the original red. Pretty sweet, eh? Here is the rough animation



and the cleanup


color

Using ToonBoom to its fullest potential!!!!

So here is something I started like one day a year ago to learn the program and just decided to finish it today. I'd like to say I brought some skills I learned over the months to add to it, but it's really hard to show improvement with a mouse. That and I don't really know or have the desire to learn how to use the onion skinning feature right now. So yeah, an entire year goes by and I still don't know how to use Toon Boom. But I like saying I own it, and the Simpsons use it for production, and it has an automatic lip sync feature. It has a nice ring to it. So without further ado, here it is Man walking dog. !




I know, you were expecting to see a man walking his dog. Hilarious!!! I got a million of em'

About to set up my pencil test system!

That's right, boys and girls! I bought a copy of Digicel Flipbook. All I have to do is set it up now. Wish me luck.

And here is a drawing for the girl who falls asleep. I just colored it in for the website, no cleanup, since it is from far away.





color