A few stills from my christmas animation

I really liked some of the designs I did for this, I also liked having fun with the noodle arms.

This guy was originally meant to be a writer for childrens television and I was going to have the cowboy give him a present box but when he opened the box he found the cowboys fist which then knocks him out. As a christmas animation I thought maybe that wasn't the best idea. In the last scene there was going to be a close up of the wanted sign saying something like "for crimes against children" but once again I lost the negative aspect out of the animation

I really love this horse. I've been drawing crappy horses (well Zebras) on my zoo trips so I was thinking about how I could avoid drawing a horse but he just couldn't be a cowboy if he wasn't on a horse. I also like the hole in the Cowboys hat, it's such a cartooning cliché that I had to put it in, that and the wilhelm scream.

This was my first mess around animation with my copy of toonboom so I'm still learning stuff. Making colours is a bit of a slow process but colouring in and changing colours is excellent. I'm also learning how to bring files across from photoshop into toonboom and it seems to handle the large images really well. I also need to learn the graphs as well, probably the reason why nothing has an ease on it. I used toonboom studio on the series 'Wakkaville' and that had an easy ease section where you could just type in a number, I cant find that option in animate. There's a few effects on this animation mostly glows and layer styles which work pretty good. I did originally create a 2 tone (highlight and shadow) on the characters but it didnt really suit the style I drew the characters with their heavy black (Koike/Mignola stlye) shadow.

Working with toonboom you use what is called the network. A spider web of lines that at the start is confusing but the more you use it, the more practical and linear it is. All you have to do is follow the lines and add things (glows/blurs etc) to the line paths, you also can attach (parent) objects together, so move one and you move the other exactly the same. It's actually a lot of fun to play with, you really work your problem solving brain.

This background was based on a lego Sheriff station. That one was bright pink, I thought about keeping the colours and making the film end with the colours from the Thai film "Tears of the black tiger". This is also from the worst camera move I have ever done! haha man it is terrible, you even see the holes in the background of areas I didn't paint. The animation from this scene and the one after I had to rush to finish before I went out for my christmas dinner. I really had fun doing the lipsyncing of the sheriff (even though premier unsynced everything and randomly removed frames) I really love this sheriff, he's like the worlds worst sheriff haha. There were a whole heap of different lines I recorded for the end "this is the true meaning of christmas" "I now believe in santa" but I chose the stupidest most confusing one "You will make a beautiful butterfly" haha.

I did grade and adjust the exported frame sequences (dont make movies out of toonboom, frame sequences are more reliable to render out) in after effects just to give it a bit more polish. After effects is probably my favourite piece of adobe software as it just adds that little bit extra to your film.

It's funny doing a write up for such a short rushed cartoon, but I really liked the design and using toonboom to make a quick animation was a good learning experience. It was a nice test film before I make 'Simon' oh and 'Simon' is a test film/series that I'm making before I make 'Dash dashing'. I'm trying a bit of forward planning with my animated films :P

Well I hope you all had a merry christmas