Spectral Window Production Log: And so it begins

I have finally started on my Hallowindow idea that I mentioned back in November. I have dropped the idea of a "haunted yard" as that is too much money and work. I am focusing solely on the animation.

I am naming it "Spectral Window" to separate it from Mark Gervais' work. Right now I am working on the storyboards for the "walkthrough". When they are finished and I create a scratch sound track, I will be doing an animatic. Hopefully I will be able to post some of the storyboards soon.

I am also working on concept art for the creatures and sets. When I make some headway on the animatic I may be able to post some of the sketches.

Right now I am simply trying to work out the best way to do the storyboards. I tried doing them digitally but since I don't have a Cintiq it is simply "uncomfortable". When I do sketching I still prefer the pencil and paper paradigm.

Anyway back to work.

Updates

Well I have become a statistic. As of January 19, I became one of the millions in this country that have been laid off. But as a Christian I have been looking at this as an opportunity. I now have the time I need to build up my portfolio and demo reel.

Anyway, on the blog front I have been active on my "America Report" blog. I have sort of been syndicated on the "Libertarian Republican" blog. The owner has shown one of my cartoons with plans to show one or two a week. I have three new political cartoons up for viewing.

With the time that I now seem to have I am about to start up on the Hallowindow experiment that I mentioned a few months ago. Also apparently according to that entry I was out of the political cartoon business. Well, I guess my mood did swing back.

On that note I've also updated the link to the "Obama's Head" animation that I put up last year. I was tired of clicking onto the site and having the thing automatically play. It's somewhat disconcerting to hear your own disembodied voice speaking to you for the umpteenth time. So I linked to the YouTube version, because quite frankly I didn't want to rewrite the Flash version to have a play button.

Hallowindow early

For the past two years I have been following the Halloween work of Mark Gervais, an animator from Calgary, Alberta in the Great White North. Since 2007 Gervais has been creating what he calls Hallowindows. The interesting thing is that he rear-projects movies that he created in Illustrator, Flash, and After Effects, in the front window of his house. He runs the movie, which is usually about two minutes long, in a loop throughout the trick-or-treating. You can also buy a DVD compilation that has the first two (official) Hallowindows, along with four themed pieces like spiders, ghosts, etc. The original was apparently so inspiring that one of the directors of Total Drama Island created his own Hallowindow featuring characters from TDI entitled "Total Drama Halloween".

So being the insane person that I am I decided during this Halloween to do my own version of a Hallowindow for next Halloween. Wow that's early, right? Well not if you knew how big a procrastinator I am (see my grandiose plans to do political cartoons). The only real difference outside of the fact that mine will suck, is that I intend to do a haunted yard to go along with the window. At the very least it ought to be fun to try.

Props go to ColdHardFlash.com for the two stories on Gervais' work.

FYI: As far as the political cartoons go, I am out of that business, at least until my mood swings back that way. My guy lost and I am currently sucking sour grapes.

Below are the three Hallowindows. The first two are Gervais' separate movies. The third movie is the compilation video of the DVD that you can buy. Finally, we have Mark Thorton's TDI send-up.

Happy Halloween I

I was just playing around with ToonBoom Studio's prepackaged templates for Halloween. I got the sound fx from a Halloween CD.

The animation was done in ToonBoom Studio and the compression was done in MediaStudio Pro.