new banner and boards

Greetings! So I changed the page a little and added a cool new banner up top! Huzzah! Although I may change it when I finally vectorize all the main characters.

I finished Storyboarding up to the title sequence, and that part is going to be a little tricky to storyboard, so I'm going to have to plan it out very carefully. But the animatic should be fun. I'm not sure if I should storyboard the entire thing, then make an animatic of the entire thing, or make animatics of parts as I go along. Hmmmm.

Here's my favorite storyboard so far:


The dialogue sounds great! There was a possibility that the digby dialogue was lost forever, but then we found it! Hooray! I wanted to upload some outtakes, but I may have to convert it into a movie first so I can upload it. Hmmmm again.

I may use the characters again for another 11 sec club animation. But only if I can make it work in a funny way. But this one has Bogey in it! How can I resist?!

For this week's film noir movie, I bring you...Film Noir! No really, that's the name of the movie(making it incredible annoying when you have to find it). It's a recent 3d animation from 2007. It's about a guy who wakes up with Amnesia(Obviously) and finds out he may be one of two people, but he doesn't quite know which one he is.

I really like it. From an animation standpoint, It's not all that great. The animations are kind of stilted, the facial expressions aren't the greatest, and all their pieces of paper have "this is a single polygon" syndrome. But the story is twisting and suspenseful and filled with interesting characters, the music is spot on and the voice actors are amazing. In the end, I'd prefer watching a semi-good animation with a great story verses an amazing animation with a sub-par story. This is the website: http://www.filmnoirthemovie.com/ and you can watch it here: http://www.movies-links.tv/movies/film_noir/ honestly, it's the only place I could find it.

See you next week!

Banners, posters, and updates galore!

Well first of all, I think that these Rickety Rat updates are a little too sporadic. So I've decided that Thursday is now Rickety Rat Update day! Every Thursday a new Update on your favorite noir vermin! So now fans (all two of you) will know when to look for new sketches, animations, sound samples, and general updates! Hooray!

Next, I'm designing a new banner for the blog to make it look prettier and draw in more followers. Take a look so far!

I have to figure out how else I can mess with the graphics of this blog. Maybe make a cool background texture. Who knows! I'm also working on a Rickety Rat poster idea, like those cool classic noir posters they used to have. I have a number of ideas, including an "everyone has a gun" poster, which I thought was kinda funny. Take a look at one of the designs:

Other than that, going through the dialogue and storyboarding. There's some great dialogue here, but it looks like because of interference, we may have to rerecord some lines. Bleah. The Storyboards are coming along nicely, here's one of them:

Roofie and Dolly in Dolly's dressing room

I just wanted to show off the nice design of Roofie's dress. So onward storyboarding!

The title sequence is gonna be tough to storyboard, so I may do something different and just put together something in After Effects, now that I've just learned some AWESOME After Effects tricks from http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/. Yay me.

Alllso, I just watched Born to Kill. It was a pretty cool old noir movie with great acting, alot of suspense, and some interesting characters. The bad guy was a hard headed tough guy and the good guy is a fat kooky detective. I highly recommend watching it for anyone interested in old Noir films. Check out the cool poster!

Hey! That's a cool idea! Since this is a Blog about a Noir animation, maybe I'll recommend a different Noir movie every time also! How does that sound? Does anyone know of some cool old or new Noir movies I should watch?

Until Next time, Detectives!

such great heights

So I did a little sketch of a few of the main characters to figure out the heights of all of them. Rascals is about the normal height of an average person/character. Rickety's a small little chump, Dolly's a little too tall and thin, and Stumble's is freakishly tall, so much so they don't make pants for him. I would think that Roofie is just slightly taller than the norm,a nd Digby just a tad shorter, so I didn't include them.

Also, if you look closely, you'll see I changed Rascals' face a bit. I think the previous version is too detailed, not cartoony enough, so I made his face rounder like before, but still kept some of the detail around the cheeks. Still can't figure out the profile view though.


Also, here's a sketch of Wally the Willow. Originally, I thought of him as just a big tree with eyes, but I'm considering putting a mouth on him. I liked the idea of him not having a mouth because it gives him more of a feeling of just sitting there and not really being able to do anything, just tuck in one place. It means he's not really a character, he's just an animated part of scenery, which is pretty depressing and what I'm going for. But if I don't give him a mouth, I'm missing some opportunities of making him look like an old man with altimeters and depriving an animator of a key lipsyncing tool. Soo I'm not sure yet.

The New Rascals

Here's the new Rascals. Still have to work on the shoes. But I gave him some slight rabbit touches and a sleeker suit. Perhaps I should make it a zoot suit?

I'm also trying to redo Digby. I like the design I have, but it doesn't account for a smiling bill, and the voice is kind of happy/psychotic sometimes. Bills are the bane of my existence.

Da Goils

So here's what happened. I did this really nice pen illustration of tall slender Dolly Duck to the right, then I realized that if the proportions were correct, Rickety would come up to abut her crotch. And considering what they do in the animation, (How could a pint-size mouse force himself on a woman literally twice his size? Get a step stool? And for that matter, how could the embrace or kiss?), it really wouldn't make sense physically. So then I did another quick illustration of Dolly more to Rickety's height, but I'm not sure I really like it.

Ducks are supposed to be high class in this world, and the model for women are medium sized and curvy. The thing with Dolly is I wanted her to be beautiful, but an outcast because she's too tall and slender. So I still like the tall version, but it really wouldn't work well with her relationship with the other characters. Perhaps I'll meet her somewhere in the middle.

Here are some sketches of Roofie, she's supposed to be about Rickety's height and build. I like the idea of her as a flapper; I keep wanting to inject 1920's style into my characters. I also like that she has a short bob, and she looks really cute here, but for the character I want, I want her a little more stalkerish. Cute but slightly off. So I need to work on the creepy part.