Pigsy and the pyramid

Hey there Ricketeers! It's all about concept art this week! I've got my third tutorial out explaining how to have moving characters with static textures! Take a look!



You can check out the finished product as an animated Gif here.

Also, I managed to do a RIcketyFolk© Class pyramid, so you can see who's on top:


EDIT: I forgot to mention the rules I go by so you don't think it's all random. Generally, the cleaner and more domesticated the animal, the higher on the scale. So domesticated cats are high class, but wild cats are low-middle class. Most wild animals are considered low class, unless they're somehow exotic. Also, the further you get form mammals, the lower on the pyramid. Insects and reptiles are pretty low class. A wild animal can get higher if he's a smooth talker or just persistent. I didn't base it on the animal kingdom, more like animals + social politics.

It's just a preliminary, and I'm sure I've left out some very important species (if fish wanna be in my town they can learn to breath air like proper Americans!) so there's a chance I'll make a nicer version in flash or illustrator. Perhaps someone would like it as a poster to put on their wall?

I really enjoyed coming up with all the different species and giving them different personalities. If you can't make out the faces you can see them more clearly here:


I've been doing a lot of research on 1920's and 30's clothing(still haven't found a lot of resources for old 1920's buildings. Any thoughts?). It's somewhat complex because I have to convert clothes made for tall slim figures into clothes for short, round figures. I was thinking of just having all the ladies tall and thin, but it's strange, the closer I make them to real humans the more out of place and odd they look.



Also, I found all these cool 1920's cartoon advertisements for women's clothing, so I'll be doing a couple of those sometime. And perhaps a few mock smoking ads. Smoking's the next being thing dontcha know! (Also dying)

And hey, did I tell you about the new Rickety Rat incentive? Well gimme and ear and I will! I started a facebook fan group for Rickety Rat, and I'm doing characters for anyone who gets a bunch of people to join! You can have your own lil' animalian noir avatar! Maybe a bear in a tux? Or a snake in a porkpie? Up to you! Get 10 friends of yours to join the facebook group and I'll ink you your own character! Get 20 friends to join the facebook group OR 10 friends to join the blog, and I'll give him the full on flash treatment! Textures and all! Just send me a message saying who you brought and an email address and I'll send you your cute cartoon character. Wouldn't that be cool to show off to your friends? I'm only going to do 10 of them, so you'd better hurry and get people liking!


This week on Noir Review, I'm talking about Touch of Evil! Directed by Orson Welles and staring Orson Welles, Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh! It's about a small town just bordering Mexico. A car blows up, and Charlton Heston, the good cop, and Orson Welles, the dirty cop, take it upon themselves to figure out who did it. Things escalate when Heston starts accusing Welles of messing with his cases and Welles starts setting Heston up.

Made in 1958, this is one of the last noirs of the classic noir period. And when Noir goes out, it goes out with a bang! Who wouldn't want to see a movie directed by the great Orson Welles and staring Charlton Heston as a hardened cop, Janet Leigh as the blond bombshell wife and Orson Welles as a tired old dirty cop? Being directed by Orson Welles, it has some interesting techniques including the use of big expansive open areas with a camera that pans and tilts to follow a character down the street, minimal use of cutting, use of steady cam, and more realistic dialogue in which characters speak over one another. Because of this and because it's so late in the fifties, it has a different feel than your usual noir.

It has some amazing acting(who doesn't love Heston and Welles? And Leigh is easy on the eyes if you get my drift) and some great film techniques(one I like is keeping the camera set in the room on a couple of characters while another character goes off screen, but they're still talking. You'd think the camera would follow them or cut, but this has a more natural feel) but, I don't know, it still doesn't have that classic noir feel. But still, it's a great film and a nice way to end the noir era. I would recommend picking it up. 42 out of 53. See you next week!