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!

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.