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.

Stumbles in Flash

Here's a version of Stumbles in Flash. I really don't like his shoes, but other than that, I think all the other textures came out pretty well. Though I think his ear get's lost. And I wanna figure out a way to shade so it looks like cross hatching but it's still dynamic. I really hope flash doesn't crash from all these layers. Crap.

Twinkle-Toes Blusto

So here's a pic of what Blusto would look like in my 11 second animation that I haven't finished yet and have put at the tail end of a very long to-do list. The Gag was that Rickety was a judge for the "little miss Adorable"contest and Blusto wanted to enter, and of course he didn't win. Hence the dialogue.

I thought it was funny and I really wish I had finished it by the deadline, just so I could be done with it. Now, not only do I not have a deadline to finish by, I have little motivation to finish an animation that would take time away from my big huge animation I'm supposed to spend time on, especially with a character that won't even be in it.

Oh well. Perhaps I'll finish it. I'm still working on the look and effects of the animation. I want to mimic some sort of shading effect you'd see in a pencil drawing but with animation, and also get that "cut-out" look without the "cut-out" animation.

Hooray for testing!

The trouble with Stumbles

So I'm still working on the character concepts with Stumbles. He's Rickety's right hand man, tall and lanky with a heart of gold. Originally he was based on Goofy, and he was just going to be a dumb lovable dog character as you can see in his previous group shot, and from sketches here:


But I didn't like the idea of him simply being a Goofy clone, I thought I could do better than that. So I pulled from many tall lanky and stupid sidekicks. Bullwinkle, and the WB vulture come to mind. At first I thought I might make him some exotic bird or turtle, setting him apart from the rest. Maybe a flamingo? But I couldn't get over the idea of him with feathers and a beak, and he'd have a surname of "The Bird" or whatnot.



I wanted to take advantage of the fact that he's one of the few characters who doesn't have a surname like Rickety Rat or Dolly Duck. He's just Stumbles. Is he such an outcast even his own kind don't want him? The how could he be so lovable? The I played with the idea that he may not be an animal at all, but some sort of amorphous creature. I came up with this design that he was literally so dumb he had a foot for a head.


But I'm not in love with the design and I don't see that being acceptable in this universe. Then I had the idea of him being an amalgamation of different animals. Maybe part moose, part dog, part fox, part bird, part pig, etc. I really like this solution because it explains why he's so dumb (he's the result of species outbreeding), why he's an outcast(very similar to the children of mixed parents in the 20's through 60's), and why he's so loving and care free(I'd assume two people from two entirely different species that loved each other enough to get married and have a child together would be very loving and accepting to their child). Here are some concepts:


I'm still playing with different species. I thought it might be cool if instead of antlers he had hands on the side of his head, which would be very emotive and funny at times, but it might be too strange for this specific universe. I also like the idea of the square nose and glasses, as if saying he's a straight arrow AND he's square.

But I have to make it apparent enough that he's multiple species without putting any one emphasis on particular species. Which is hard cause antlers + long nose = moose but atlers +long nose + dog ears still looks too moosy. And also I have to make hm ugly enough to be interesting and a social outcast, but still lovable enough to want to be seen as a performer. Ugh. Beautifully designed ugliness. The curse of being a conformist artist.

Any thoughts on designs or particular animal species?

Rickety Rat Vectorized

I just finished a vectorized version of Rickety, still using the ink and pencil textures. His shoes still need work and his nose needs to be darker, but other than that how does it look? Better or worse than the traditionally drawn ink outline?

Also, an 11 second animation coming soon!