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!

This pigsy wigsy taught you how to use flash

This week I've been busy with some freelance so I haven't had much time to work on the animation. Though I'm really glad I've forced myself to update each week as it gives me something to shoot for and I don't inadvertently put the animation on hold. I do have an update on my flash tutorial! I was concocting different characters, trying to decide one that has all the details I wanted to talk about.

And I didn't want to do one of the main characters because...well...trade secret damnit!

So I came up with him:


Pigsy Malone! Or Porky McRind. Or Orvell Dashing. I don't know, some quirky pig name. Anyways, Hopefully next week I'll have the first part of my video tutorial: how to use the line tool quickly in Flash.

Check out some of the other guys I was considering:


Aren't they cool lookin' and cartoony? They also represent the lower-class folk in my RicketyWorld ©. The mole guy is a gangster type, the turtle is a some sort of strongman joe, the doe-eyed kid is a lil' rapscallion, and the fourth one is uh...yeah he's just dumb. ALso check out the uppercrust:

Ducks and Rabbits and Cats and fancy birds oh my! Of course cats are upperclass. Jerks.

Sooo , since I reviewed a bleah Robert Downy Jr movie last week, for this week on Noir Review I'll talk about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang! Honestly, this is more mystery/whodunit than Noir, but I think there are enough noir elements to call it noir, so I'm making a call. Sooo Noir-suspense-comedy? Yeah that sounds right.

It's funny and witty. Robert Downy Jr. does a great job as the deadpan and silly narrator and Val Kilmer is hilarious as a gay private eye. It makes pokes fun at the genre cliches and has one of those tight narratives that wraps up everything nicely in a bow. I love the dialogue in here. This is one of those movies you'll be quoting when no one knows what you're talking about. I completely recommend it! A solid 64 out of 67. How can you NOT see it with a score like that?!

Oh, and by the way, I learned how to embed video. Go me. Does anyone else love stylish graphic openings?

Wally's mouth

So this week I'm still working on the Storyboards and the title sequence animatic. I was hoping to have the title sequence done this week, but some problems arose and it will have to wait until next week (hopefully). Buuuuuut I do have stuff to show this week!

First, if you look to the right, you'll notice I've added an "about" page describing the basic plot of the animation for anyone who started checking out this blog and has no idea what it's for. Plus I added a characters page to tell give you a little insight and backstory on the cast. With pictures!

Second, I did I semi-final version of Wally the Willow! At first I wanted him without a mouth because it made it seem like he was just part of the background rather than a real character(how would you feel if you were just a tree in the background?). But the more I think about it, the more I think a mouth and nose look better on him. What do you think?




I like that he has branches sticking up in the middle as if he were balding.

Third, I'm starting a test animation with Rascals. Rather than start an 11 sec animation with all the other stuff I have to do, then not make the deadline, then not caring about finishing it, again, I'm doing a multiple line animation.

This is what I'm talking about: If anyone saw my Dirk Headstrong animation I was working on last year, you may have caught my video of Squidula saying the same line but having the action being interpreted different ways. If you didn't, you can watch it here!

So there's one line from Rascals that the actor said it multiple times and can be interpreted multiple ways. I love animating these because it shows the different ways someone can act out such a simple line and the range of different emotions one can exude from a reading. Yay acting!

Also, this doesn't have anything to do with the animation, but for those of you know about it, the everyday detective is coming! We did an old fashioned radio play about a detective doing mundane things in dramatic ways. It's been a blast working on it. Right now I'm waiting on my sound guy Lucas to add music and sound. I think anyone interested in noir is really going to enjoy it. And if it gets a good enough reception, I'll have to make more!

So for this week, on Noir Review, I'm going to talk about Roman Polanski's Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. There's two reasons to see it right there! It's a real classic neo-noir. It's about a detective, Jack Nicholson, who gets involved with a big conspiracy with the water system. The cinematography is some of the best you'll see anywhere. If you're an animator, filmmaker, or comic book artist wondering how to make your shots interesting, this is the movie you should see.

Storywise, it starts off slow, and it's a long haul, but the climactic ending is well worth it. Jack nicholson does a great job as a sleazy with a heart of gold detective and pulls off some great tricks every good noir detective in the 1940's without a computer and gps tracking system should know. Overall I'd give it a 19 out of a 21.



See you next time, Noirheads!

Stumbles Cartoon Animatic and characters

Man have I got a bunch of stuff for you! I have stuff up the wazoo! Having stuff up the Wazoo should be considered a serious medical condition for what I've got for you!

First off, I've got brand new all new pictures of the rest of the gang! Rascals, Roofie, Dolly and Digby! I might still tweak the textures and such, but on the whole I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Check them out!

Rascals in his swanky suit. EDIT: Thanks from Sean letting me know I forgot his whisker Mustache.

Dolly in her classy pokadot dress

Digby I'm still working on the textures. Something strange.

Dolly in her fishnets.I love how they turned out.

And not only that!

I've also got a rough animatic of the first part for the animation, Stumbles' Cartoon, "How to be a Noir Detective" which I might release as a promotional piece to hype the project up. The voices and sound effects are rough, but Lucas, my sound guy is gonna make it sound Beeeeautiful. Also, the music is "Frankie and Johnny" by Bunny Berigan, from the Brick Soundtrack. So even though I think it works pretty well for the mood, I probably definitely can't use it. But I wouldn't want to anyways, because my sound guy Lucas who's done all the music for my previous animations is making an amazing score from scratch! So take that copyright infringement! I think it's coming along pretty nicely.



EDIT: if you wanna see it bigger than two inches by two inches click here.

So this week since I'm using music from the soundtrack and also because it's awesome, I feel I need to talk about Brick. Brick is Noir + high school. You'd think that given so many teen angsty revamps these days it would be a bad idea, but it is truly one of the greatest Noir movies(and movies in general) ever. It's got a great cast of characters that are high school versions of their older noir counterparts, Dialogue seemingly ripped straight from Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum, a haunting mesmerizing score, AMAZING cinematography, and a twisting winding story. The best part are all these little mundane moments you would see in high school life but come off as comical in a noir story. I can't recommend this enough. Check out the trailer and also these awesome character posters I recently found:


Well that's enough for this week. Don't get used to this luxury, I won't always have stuff jammed up my wazoo. I need to sit down sometime!

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.

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!

variant pen walk cycle

This is the same ink walk cycle, but over the gray background you can see more clearly the "cutout" look of Rickety. Not sure if it works, if it should be smooth, or if it should be more rough.

First Rickety Rat

So I've made a Rickety Rat blog to document my progress on the Rickety Rat animation. Especially the earlier stuff, when I'm just trying out new things. The animation will be titled:

"Rickety Rat, You're a Louse of a Mouse."

It's about washed up Vaudeville star, Rickety Rat, as he tries to get his act together for one last chance, but everything keeps falling apart around him through scandal, betrayal, and murder.

Hope you enjoy it! This is my penciled Rickety Rat so far.





This is a pencil test walk cycle. I'm still experimenting with what kind of style I'm going to use, but it will most likely be a combination of traditional animation and flash animation.