RubberOnionBattle - 6 from 2016

Here is my compilation of entries from 2016's #RubberOnionBattle challenge. I only ended up completing 6 of the 12 monthly challenges.

It's made in Flash with the exception of the "hammer" scene which was made in the app Flipaclip.

Cheers!

Assorted 2D bits - Royalty free green screen animation

In no particular order here are some animated bits from my 2016 #RubberOnionBattle submissions. These were created in Adobe Flash with the exception of the "Hammer" shot which was created in the mobile app Flipaclip.

Feel free to use these clips in your own projects and send me a link so I can see what you've come up with.

You can download the video here: http://bit.ly/2p2pmPu

Happy remixing!

Worst Video Game - #RubberOnionBattle

Hey guys,

For April the theme for #RubberOnionBattle was 'Worst Video Game'.
You can see my submission on Instagram and Newgrounds.com or embedded below.

I decided to try an animation in the style of a video game from yesteryear.

It was my first time working in Pixel Art (thanks to the Pixel Tools v2 extension), I enjoyed it and found it to be pretty forgiving. You can download Pixel Tools v2 at Newgrounds.

Walk Cycle... what Walk Cycle?
I decided that not having a walk cycle animation would help crown this as the worst Video Game.

Look out for the compilation video featuring all the submissions coming soon.

This could be the worst video game. Music: "After dinner jazz" by mathgrant. #rubberonionbattle April. @rubberonion

A video posted by Jeff Cook (@aperturejam) on Apr 29, 2016 at 9:30pm PDT

If you're on Instagram, Show me love! ♥♥♥

Music:
After-Dinner Jazz by mathgrant
I was searching for Chiptunes tracks on the Free Music Archive and was thrilled to find this piece. It's perfect as I was looking for something casual and non-epic. It has a real catchy bounce to it.

Thank you mathgrant!!

You can hear the full track or listen to other tracks by mathgrant at the links below.

After-Dinner Jazz (mathgrant) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

My development work:

Here are the development sketches and some experiments with Pixel Art.

Pixel Art:

I used Pixel Tools v2 as a clean up tool for my rough animation... although the final version doesn't have any character animation. 

Don't blink!

An animation test for #rubberonionbattle. #pixelart #pixel #animation #walkcycle #loop #hypnotic

A video posted by Jeff Cook (@aperturejam) on Apr 9, 2016 at 5:12am PDT

Cheers!

2016 - #RubberOnionBattle

Hello,

It's me... with my first blog post since the end of 2012.
In short, I'm starting to feel creative again for the first time in many years. :D

I've also updated the URL of this blog to be more in line with my other social media accounts.

#RubberOnionBattle
Freelance animator Stephen Brooks aka Rubber Onion decided to "throw down" an animation challenge to animator Rob Yulfo but soon invited anyone who wanted to participate.

So for January 2016, we got the first #RubberOnionBattle. It was a lot of fun, especially because it got me creating a little short of my own.

Basically, anyone who wanted to participate could. They had to create a 15 second short before the end of January and upload it to instagram. The theme of the shorts was Casual Friday gone wrong.

Check out my short below and compilation of Januarys entries below that.

Casual Friday gone wrong.

 
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/669603

RubberOnionBattle Jan 2016

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/670053
or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiVXf2nfJNw

The February challenge is now underway and you can find details on Twitter and Instagram. 

Join in.

My Development work:

See the Rough layout and the final frames.
I've left the edges of the image in so can see where the background gets cropped in the final animation.

There were originally going to be more gags, both in the animation and scattered throughout the background but I felt the scene was getting too busy and cluttered.

I was sad to cut the Rubber Ducky as well as a potential action figure from the desk.

In fact the original punchline was going to involve electrocution but I decided to go lowbrow and lift a gag from Caddyshack instead. 

Cheers!

"An Eye for an Aye-Aye" July Preview 2010

Here is a preview segment from my short cartoon. It's most of a sequence, there are a couple of shot's which I haven't Cleaned Up yet and so they weren't included. I won't be putting up a lot of video's from "Aye-Aye" anymore, not until the cartoon is finished anyway. I will be uploading video's from other animations I work on though.

This is just a short sequence from my cartoon. I'm quite deep into this now and I would really appreciate any feedback you could give me. Be it on Style, character design, animation timing, anything really. I just need to know that people are actually going to want to watch my cartoon when it's finished. Please leave a comment here or on the video page and share this preview with your friends too. All help is welcome.

Show notes and technical bits:

3 of the shots in the segment were made in 2007 while the 4 other shots were all made 2010.

The way each of the shots was put together varies greatly.

In 2007 I was in my final year at Freelance Animation School. Those shots were Cleaned Up traditionally with pencil and paper, then Scanned one frame at a time. The animation frames were coloured in Toonboom and the backgrounds were coloured in Photoshop. Toonboom would trace over my Clean Up drawings and Vector them. 

The quality of the vector depended on my pencil clean up along with the size and quality of the original drawings. Doing it this way, any dirt or registration marks left on the paper during scanning would need to be erased later in Toonboom. It wasn't always possible to find all the bits of dirt on the frames.

 From 2008 onwards I have been working with some Open Source software to achieve the same results as with Toonboom and Photoshop. These days my animation shot pipeline goes a little something like this...

• Traditional Hand Drawn animation - Pencil and Paper on an animation desk.
• Line test the animation using a webcam mounted to an old photographic enlarger - See Here
• If I'm happy with the timing of the shot then I start Digitally cleaning up the captured frames. I do my clean up in a program called 'Pencil'. Digital CU can take the same amount of time as Traditional CU.
• Although pencil has colouring capabilities, I like to do all my colouring and background art in Gimp.
• Then when the shot is cleaned up and coloured I use a program called Wax for the compositing.
• Audio is done with Audacity and then my final edit is made in Pinnacle Studio 12 (which isn't Open Source).

I will go into these steps in more detail one day but that probably won't be until things wrap on "Aye-aye".

 Cheers.

Showreel June 2010

Here is my updated Showreel of traditional hand drawn animation. It includes full colour shots and rough pencil tests.

Music: 'Sweet Georgia Brown' by Latché Swing.
All the content in this video is hand drawn, with paper and pencil (the traditional way) and then Cleaned Up, Coloured in the computer and composited together into a final shot. This was all done by me and mostly with Open Source software.

Here is a list of clips I have used:

• Several colour shots from "An Eye for an Aye-Aye" bookend the Showreel. This includes 2 shots where we hear my character, Tim Portans speak for the first time.
• The Superhero segments are animation made for background use in the short film 'Michael John Shadbolt'
• The Line (pencil) tests include a clip from "An Eye for an Aye-Aye" and 2 early animation clips I made at Freelance Animation School.
• All 4 of the 'One Shots' to date are also include throughout the video.

Let me know what you liked or disliked or maybe tell me about something you want to see more of.

YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXA-6iNVbiY
Vimeo     - http://vimeo.com/12969907

Cheers.

Preview Clip

Here is a shot from my short cartoon "An Eye for an Aye-Aye". You can see the original pencil test, followed by the final composite. This was a slightly more complicated shot to put together as I ended up with the following layers:

1. Tim Portans
2. The Branch
3. Gun Smoke 
4. Prop Shotgun (briefly)
5. Background

I'm very happy with the way it's turned out.

This was created mostly with open source software, The sound effects are from http://www.freesound.org

Thank you to gcmax, nthompson and Alienxxx for the sounds.

"An Eye for an Aye-Aye" Shot Progression

The cartoon I am making is called "An Eye for an Aye-Aye", I started it a few years back when I was studying animation. Recently I have started working on it again in my spare time and using as much freeware as I can to get it completed.

This sequence shows the development of one shot from the cartoon. It has an early pencil test, a more detailed pencil test, the digitally cleaned up line, the digitally coloured cel and the final composite. The linetests are actually from late 2007, whereas the clean up and colouring is from up to a few days ago. I hope you will excuse the lineboil and other little nitpicks and enjoy this little sequence.

This was cleaned up with a program called Pencil, All the colouring was done in GIMP and composited in WAX.


Thanks for dropping by.

Showreel 2006 - 2009

Here is my showreel of hand drawn animation from the past 3 years. Full colour shots and rough pencil tests. From studying at 'Freelance Animation School' to working with a home setup.

The clips include some animation tests from school, shots from my student film and work I was doing for friends.

Music: 'Sweet Georgia Brown' by Latché Swing

Here's a link for those of you who prefer to use Vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/7749548

And here's a link to the YouTube page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB82GMsHbRE

Now I can check Showreel off my list of things to do in the end of year wind up. If you know anyone who might like this, please share the video and point them in this direction.


Thanks guys.

'An Eye for an Aye-Aye' 3d Test shot

'An Eye for an Aye-Aye' 3d test shot from Jeff Cook on Vimeo.

Just a test of a 2d animated scene converted into anaglyph 3d. It is slightly enhanced if you wear 3D anaglyph glasses but at the same time it's not too hard on the eyes without glasses at this resolution.

Background elements were made in The Gimp, camera moves were done in Wax. I use Faststone Photo Resizer for all my batch needs, in this case it was to get the colour values correct. Then I put the image sequences back into Wax (which thankfully has a layer multiply tool) and slightly offset them until I saw some 3d.

This IS a scene from the opening of my student film. It's the establishing shot of the location and my main man, Tim Portans.

Guess I should stop playing around now...

'Regurgitate' bumper

An unused bumper submission for ISTV.