I was thinking that maybe, if there are people out there who like my frame by frame work, I could, perhaps, work for them...

I could do stuff that nobody likes to do, like animating a character who is walking toward or away from the camera, or, perhaps, toward or away from the camera at an angle. My animation skills get sharper all the time, but I could use some practice here and there. I promise that my abilities have gotten much better than what is represented in any of my current cartoons on NG. But look them over, just in case. I don't want to mislead anyone or make people think that I'm better than I am.

I was thinking that I could do one character at a time, and charge one dollar per frame, (coloring not included) which could be paid to my Paypal account on my website. This way I could possibly acquire some funds that would help me expand Ghostyfilms.com in new directions.

Since I haven't tried this before, I'm trying to think of the appropriate information I would require. A drawing of the character seems like an obvious first --multiple angles if the character is going to be doing a lot of moving around. You'd need to specify whether you'd want me to animate over an existing background or just a blank screen with a horizon or something... You'd also have to present the background if you have one.

Anyway... I'm not looking to animate an entire movie for you, because I'm already working on Chanter Tales 1.3. But if there's a particular shot that you're having trouble with or that you'd just rather not animate, let me know and we'll talk about whether it's something I can do.

I'm thinking that, out of fairness, if you completely hate the animation I've made, I will completely reanimate the number of frames you've paid for ONE TIME. Unfortunately I won't be doing refunds, because it's my time as well as my skill that you'd be paying for, and I don't have lots of time where I can reanimate something over and over and over again. I promise I'm not the kind of person that will half ass the job.

Anyway, if that sounds reasonable to you, let me know...

Thanks to the series page, my website has doubled the number of hits per month so far. That makes me feel pretty good. My fan count is up to 58 now. It was slowly climbing before, but now it seems I have a new fan every day or every other day. Yesterday I had 31 hits on my site. Today, I've had 25 hits before 1:00pm. I'm not sure exactly sure how to interpret this information yet, but hopefully it means good things are on the horizon. Thanks again, Tom!

So if anyone out there is interested in buying a T-shirt, and you just don't like the shirts that are currently there, let me know what kind of shirt you want, and I'll do my best to put one up.

Anyway, now for the December edition of the Chanter Tales news. I'm trying to work on it every day. Unfortunately it's only about one third of the way finished, maybe a little more --I think. It's hard to tell. I have it divided up into sections in my head, and some sections may be larger than others. Hopefully I can get another third done this month, if not the whole thing.

I've fulfilled my quota of one cartoon per month this year, that is, if you count the Blamformers collab. I'm counting it. So as far as animation goes, it's all Nuok for the rest of the month. This Monday, I plan on going over to my friend Brian Zuk's house to record some lines that will develop Loric's character in future episodes. It just occurred to me that I never revealed his name in the first two episodes. I'll have to make sure to do that at some point... But I need to record Brian's part before I can complete the next scene. For now, I think I'll work on the backgrounds for it. So I have to animate an argument between Nuok and Loric that will characterize the Chanter culture a bit, and then there are two encounters with the hunter who is after Nuok, which could be complicated. Those are the bench marks I'll reveal, so, anyone who cares will be able to gage how far along I am in future posts.

Now I'm going to Dunkin Donuts for something hot to drink... When I get back, the animation will resume...

Many thanks to Tom Fulp for giving me a series page for my KR47 series! I don't know about any other Flash artists, but, for me, it's a pretty big deal. Hopefully this will drive more people to my website, and maybe help generate enough income so that I can purchase a new copy of Flash and do all the things that my current version won't allow me to do... A couple of the KR47 episodes could use some touching up, but, overall, I'm pretty happy with the way they've turned out. I've been coming to and submitting to Newgrounds for a couple of years now, and the fact that I finally have enough episodes of a decent series to justify a series page makes me feel pretty good. It really puts some gas in my creative tank.

Here's a link to the page:

http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/k r47.html

Anyway... I was looking over some of my older work, and I've decided that, at some point, I'd like to go back and redo some of my older work. If you look at my earliest submissions and watch until the latest, you can really see how I've been polishing up my work. Part of that is just experience, but part of it is based on the fact that I've watched so many other great artists here and learned from them. So thanks to you guys as well.

In other KR47-related news, Rob, his brother, Chris, film maker, Pete Q, and I have recently finished shooting the live-action KR47 movie. I think all that needs to be done is the editing. I'm guessing we'll be posting it on Youtube at some point. I'm not sure what the credits sequence is going to look like at this point. It might be animated, or perhaps we'll be doing a live musical number where I play a guitar riff that Rob might rap over or something. Not sure...

Anyway... Thanks again, Tom!

Ok... Here it is, November...

I feel obligated to post some sort of update on my work. Not that I think I'm so important that everyone is thinking about my shit, but I know a handful of people care. I've been able to put out an episode of Chanter Tales once a year for the past two years, so I'm thinking that maybe it will be done by new years? I know I didn't work on it all the time in previous years, and somehow I got it done by the end of the year. Hopefully history is a good indication. The bookstore I work at is closing, so I won't have a job this February, but I will be collecting severance pay. I'm not sure what that means in terms of animation. It might turn out that being paid while not having a job will help me finish some cartoons more quickly --that is, if CT isn't done by New Year's Day. Then again, the search for a job might slow the thing down.

I will be trying to put out another one of those short KR47 cartoons this month. It's been awhile, and I meant to do one last month, but I've been getting more hours at work, and I've done some two-day appalachian trail hikes, which sort of took my mind away from that sort of thing. I am planning on playing guitar in some clubs here and there... But I feel I need to stick to my "one cartoon per month" agenda... Otherwise I'll feel pretty bad about being a slacker. Other than that, I'm going to be working on a live-action KR47 movie with my friend, Rob. I'm not certain when or where people will be able to see that, but hopefully that will turn out ok.

Yeah... So maybe people will crack the whip and keep me working on CT regularly, so it will be done by New Year's. That would be cool.

I made a Madness Day submission.

It's not your typical side-scrolling video-game-style Madess cartoon; it's more 3D. But that's sort of my style, so I had to try to shoot for the shots where people are running toward or away from the screen. It's based on a character I created when I was a kid, called "Mystery Jim." I decided to make him the star, because his original adventures were a lot like the main character of Madness. Basically he'd run around while fighting henchmen and evil aliens. It was sort of a futuristic Madness-style cartoon. Anyway... Check that mutha out!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
401703

I got my Newgrounds prize pack for the Blamformers collab today!

So they gave me a bunch of stuff. We all know Starscream and Ironhide. I got action-figure versions of them. I also got a little yellow Transformer that I've never heard of. His name is "Longview." I have a couple of younger cousins that will probably be able to put them to good use.

Also I chose the black Newgrounds logo shirt. I haven't tried it on yet, but I'll probably wear it to work tomorrow. They sent me a whole bunch of stickers. I put a Newgrounds logo sticker on the bumper of my car, and my father put a "Tank Men" sticker on the bumper of his car.

They also sent me some metal key chains. One was in the shape of a Decepticon logo, and the other was in the shape of an Autobot logo. I took the Decepticon logo keychain, and I gave the Autobot logo to my dad.

Pretty cool, huh?

Thanks again, Tom, as well as to the rest of the Newgrounds team!

Well back to the animating!

I submitted some music to the Castle Crashers music contest, and, I must admit, I'm a little disappointed in how it turned out. I started out by sporadically writing parts over the course of a couple of days on my uncle Dan's acoustic guitar. I played some chords with little lead riffs in between here and there. Then I went to my computer and plotted out some drum tracks with Magix Music Maker 10 and tried to add the guitar tracks to them.

One of the problems I have when I'm recording is that I have a lot of trouble getting good recording quality. It's summer, and I don't have air conditioning in my house, so I have these fans running to keep the house cool. Ideally, you want to record in an environment that is noiseless. At first, I'd just turn off all the fans and close all the windows to make the house quiet, but after about fifteen minutes, I'd start to sweat. I decided that I'd just wait for a nice cool day to record, but the deadline started creeping up, and no cool days were coming.

In the past, I'd recorded in my garage, and that wasn't too bad, but sometimes you could hear noise from the street in the background. I decided to record in my basement, because it was nice and cool there, and it seemed as if no outside noise could get in. That was mostly true, but sometimes, someone upstairs would flush the toilet or turn on the faucet, and I'd hear the sound of water rushing through the pipes.

So I lugged my laptop, my mixer, my microphones, step stool, microphone cables, and my guitar down into the basement. At first I was recording both chords and lead riffs at the same time in the same take. But that made it seem overly complicated, and it sounded as if I was struggling to fit everything in. So I decided to record separate lead and rhythm tracks. Sometimes I'd experiment with using my uncle's guitar for the lead tracks, and my guitar for the rhythm, but that didn't sound right, so I'd switch up. Finally I decided to use my uncle's guitar for the whole thing. So I worked on that all of one day, and I couldn't really get a neat recording. I figured that it was due to my lack of practice, and I decided that, the next day, I'd be able to make a better recording, because I'd done nothing but play the song all day the previous day.

The next day I lugged all my recording equipment back down in the basement --I kept bringing it all back up at the end of the day, because rain was in the forecast, and my basement floods. My fingers were a little sore from playing so long the previous day, but part of being a guitar player is ignoring the pain in your fingertips. After awhile, I managed to record some tracks that I thought were pretty good, and after lugging all my recording equipment back upstairs, I plugged my laptop into the network, so I could transfer the sound file onto my other computer, which would allow me to listen to the recording through some larger speakers, instead of the headphones that I'd been using down in the basement.

Even though everything sounded good on the headphones, when I transfered the sound file to the other computer, the guitar parts sounded terrible, --dull-- as if I was listening to a guitar player while hiding in the bushes outside his window. As if that wasn't bad enough, I started to notice this really annoying buzzing sound every time I played something on the low E-string. I picked up my uncle's guitar and started playing the song, and, even though I hadn't noticed the buzzing before, now it sounded as annoying and painful to me as if some sort of lilliputian was chainsawing my eardrums.

I decided that maybe I should use my guitar for everything instead of my uncle's, but my guitar sounded pretty dull. It might've been because the strings are old and dead, but I don't have a whole lot of cash these days, and I wasn't able to buy new strings at that moment, because I'd spent my pay check on food, gas, and rent. After awhile, I decided that my acoustic guitar wasn't the best choice, and that meant that I'd have to record the song on my electric. I figured that my acoustic recording quality was so bad because the acoustic guitars just weren't loud enough to drown out all the sonic impurities in the air. So I dragged all my usual stuff down into the basement, this time with the addition of my electric --a Hamer Duotone hollow bodied guitar-- and my amplifier. I didn't really want to use my electric guitar, because Castle Crashers seems like a medieval game, and, even though I had drum tracks from a standard contemporary drum kit, I didn't feel as if an electric guitar would capture the folkiness that you'd need for a medieval game.

Anyway, so with my fingers blistering, I started to do take after take until I finally had some guitar tracks that I liked. Then it seemed as if, since I was using an electric guitar, that I needed to add bass, because, otherwise, it would sound very thin. So I brought my bass guitar down. I had to plug the bass right into the mixer, because I can't afford a bass amp at the moment. When I was satisfied with my bass tracks, I brought everything upstairs again, plugged the laptop into the mixer, and listened to the recording on the big speakers. The drum and bass tracks seemed pretty crisp, because the drums were generated by Magix, and the bass was plugged right into the mixer. But the guitar, again, had that same old "I'm listening to you from the bushes outside your house" feel. I also started to notice flaws in my playing. Certain things seemed very sloppy all of the sudden --like the solo. Maybe that's from the frustration of recording; maybe that's just an excuse. Also I noticed that it doesn't always loop properly. Sometimes it does, but other times it seems to lag at the point where it goes from the end back to the beginning. I'm not sure if that's because of something I did, or if it's because of the computer...

So because time was running out, I submitted the thing, hoping that I might get a chance to rerecord it if the Castle Crashers team liked it. Normally I don't like plugging my guitars directly into the mixer, because I don't like them without distortion, and I don't have a distortion pedal. Normally I just turn the gain up on my amp, and it sounds pretty good. But when recording, that's just not adequate. Maybe that's because I don't have a good mic. Maybe it's because I'm not in a sound-proof room. I realized that Magix has an amp simulator, and I'm thinking that, for future recordings, I'll try using that while plugging the guitar into the mixer, but I was having trouble finding a distortion option that I liked... Not really sure what to do.

Anyway, here's the recording:

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen /91395

The other day, I was talking to this other animator about a series I made called "Chanter Tales," and I was telling the person how I felt that animating a character who is walking toward or away from the camera is the hardest thing you could possibly animate. Sure, there are quick and easy methods, like animating a loop of a person who is walking in place, as if he's on a treadmill, and then tweening it so that it grows in size. Also, that method can look very artificial if your background has lot of features. But sometimes, you want your character to stop, look around, and then continue walking. There are so many subtle things that you need to consider --like how the feet move when the person stops and how they rest.

I think that having characters walk toward and away from the screen is a very good thing to do in your movies, because it adds depth to your cartoon. Most people animate characters that walk onto the stage from the side, sort of like a side-scrolling video game, which gives the cartoon a very flat feel. There's nothing really wrong with that when you're making a very silly animation, but when you're shooting for realism, that depth is vital. I think that adding depth, simply by animating something mundane, like walking, also gives your cartoon a lot of credibility. By animating every day things, instead of having a battle consume the entire animation, I think you ground the cartoon in a bit of reality, and that makes it cool. Constant action makes it seem as if you're trying to make a character look cool. But flashiness isn't always as cool as reality. Real people who get things done are cooler than people who are trying to act cool. If you throw in something mundane here and there, I think the audience will watch it and subconsciously think, I'm looking at a character doing the real things that I do, in an environment that looks real. When something weird happens in a world that looks real, it's more shocking.

In the last Chanter Tales, I made my main character, Nuok, foraging for food, and I think that what that says to the audience is that, he's only human, he's in danger of starvation, not only that, but a mysterious magical being is trying to kill him. He's not invincible. He's actually has to worry about death. Something is at stake, and I think that's interesting.

Anyway, I was just thinking about that because I was working on one of those animations where Nuok is walking away from the screen, and it's a real pain in the butt. I keep having to pick up my shoes and hold them in front of the screen, because it's hard to draw a 2D foot that not only looks 3d, but that is also moving. At the same time, it's rewarding, because I often force myself to do things that are hard, and I'm getting better at it, and, in my opinion, it's looking pretty cool.