New Poster

Hey there Ricketeers©! Have I got a surprise for you! Well, it's not really a surprise if you've been keeping track, but still! I'm working on a new promotional poster (I finally picked one to start) and here's what I've got so far:
I't's pretty good, but I'm gonna work on it some more, add some shading, maybe a bit of texture, we'll see what I can do with it.

I've also been doing some costume design for our heroines, look at this smart but cute attire for Dolly and Roofie:

That might be fur on her coat, not because she's an extravagant duck, but it's something Rascals would buy for her.

Don't have much else for you this week, Ricketeers. I've been working on the storyboards, and I might be at the half way point. I should really be doing set and environmental design, and I've scoured art deco books for reference, but it's probably going to be put off until I absolutely have to. I much prefer drawing characters than buildings. Who doesn't? YOU'RE HIRED!

For this week on Noir Review, I want to talk about something you're probably all familiar with and it may even be one of your old favorites as it is mine, Batman The Animated Series!

I think this old 90's cartoon is one of the best examples about how to do great noir (especially the first three seasons before the style changed). It's got a perfect 1930's-1940's feel from the buildings to the attire, it's filled with dark shadows and alleyways, and the music is some of the best scoring I've ever heard (when are they going to release a soundtrack?!) And the voices they got to play such iconic characters, Mark Hamil will always be the best Joker

What gave the show it's biggest noir feel is he stories. Many times they'd focus an episode around a normal person who spirals psychotically into the criminal trenches, or an already down and out criminal who's just trying to get back on his feet but society or his own urges won't let him. Many an episode ended on a sad note, or at the least a feeling of, "sure, the batman stopped him this time, but it doesn't matter much because he'll be back", that continuous downward spiral.

I could talk all day about my favorite episodes, but 'll only name a few:

Feat of Clay parts 1 & 2: voiced by the amazing Ron Pealman, a failed actor with a horrible facial disfigurement gets turned into the horrible monster Clayface and tries to get his revenge on the man who changed him.

The Gray Ghost: Voiced by Adam West, A washed-up TV star helps Batman stop a mad-bomber somehow connected to his old TV show.

A Bullet for Bullock: A whole episode revolving around Harvey Bullock, played out like a jazzy detective drama, as he figures out who's trying to kill him.

Almost Got 'im: I think this is one of everybody's favorite episodes. Siting around a poker table, the Joker, Two-Face, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, and the Penguin share stories about how they all almost killed the Batman.

Two of my favorite scores:




Trial: Batman and Prosecutor get trapped at Arkham where all the villains put Batman on Trial for turning them into monsters. Let's face it, this should be the next Batman-Phoenix Wright crossover videogame. Objection!

But what's your favorite episode? See you next time Ricketeers!

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!

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!

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.