KevinLordi

Strivfe - "THE HOURGLASS" Title Card

As previously mentioned, I'm being commissioned to paint title cards for songs on a new album by my old friend Steve Ventresca, aka Strivfe, who I've previously animated music videos for when I was in college (and developed EEnE fanprojects with in high school, lol).  This was the third title card painting I did, and from now I'll post them in order, hehe. Here's a directory of Strivfe-related links:

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/strivfe/retro-pop-future 

These title cards are based on the title cards  that play before AKA Cartoons (Ed, Edd n Eddy and Brothers Grunt), so many of them include direct inspiration from specific title cards.  This one includes references to my favorite, most surreal EEnE title cards: 'Every Which Way But Ed' and 'It Came From Outer Ed'.  The challenge of this one was trying to fuse two very similar title cards (the premise of both is just nonsense floating around in voids) without making it overcrowded, but still conveying the chaos of merging the two images.  I hope I achieved that!

Fun Fact: the hardest part is the LETTERING!  There are no rules to this font so it's really random figuring out what the letters should look like, and it takes several drafts to find the right shapes and flow and colors to make sure it effectively presents the title.

BONUS STUFF:

Here's the painting without text, followed by my original concept art:

Strivfe - "YEAH YEAH YEAH" Title Card

As previously mentioned, I'm being commissioned to paint title cards for songs on a new album by my old friend Steve Ventresca, aka Strivfe, who I've previously animated music videos for when I was in college (and developed EEnE fanprojects with in high school, lol).  This was the fourth title card painting I did, I'm posting it out of order since it's so summer-appropriate! Here's a directory of Strivfe-related links:

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/strivfe/retro-pop-future 

These title cards are based on the title cards  that play before AKA Cartoons (Ed, Edd n Eddy and Brothers Grunt), so many of them include direct inspiration from specific title cards.  This one includes references to 'Vert-Ed-Go' (the foreground), 'Pop Goes the Ed' (left side of backyard), 'Keeping Up With the Eds' (right side of backyard) and 'Ed, Ed and Away' (the background houses).  This was one of the most challenging because I had to paint a large percentage of each of those 4 title cards and scale them all to fit in one image .  This and the next painting are the most referential to the AKA Cartoon title cards-- afterward, I did more paintings that were original concepts.

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Mom!!!

BONUS STUFF:

Here's the painting without text, followed by my original concept art:

Strivfe - "REFLECTIONS" Title Card

As previously mentioned, I'm being commissioned to paint title cards for songs on a new album by my old friend Steve Ventresca, aka Strivfe, who I've previously animated music videos for when I was in college (and developed EEnE fanprojects with in high school, lol).  This was the first title card painting I ever did and I was so proud, I couldn't believe I got it to look so painted.  Here's a directory of Strivfe-related links:

 https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/strivfe/retro-pop-future  

These title cards are based on the title cards  that play before AKA Cartoons (Ed, Edd n Eddy and Brothers Grunt), so many of them include direct inspiration from specific title cards.  This one includes references to 'Mirror Mirror on the Ed', 'Oath to an Ed' and 'The Ed-Touchables'.  Those shows' original title cards were painted manually by the incredibly talented Kathy Boake W and I hope my digital paintings can do them justice!

ALSO, happy birthday to my Nana!

BONUS STUFF:

Here's the painting without text, followed by my original concept art:

Strivfe - "COASTAL HIGHWAY" Title Card

As previously mentioned, I'm being commissioned to paint title cards for songs on a new album by my old friend Steve Ventresca, aka Strivfe, who I've previously animated music videos for when I was in college (and developed EEnE fanprojects with in high school, lol).  I think this was the second of the digital paintings I did, but it's the first one he released so here we go!  I was able to find the song here on Soundcloud, enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/strivfe/strivfe-coastal-highway

These title cards are based on the title cards  that play before AKA Cartoons (Ed, Edd n Eddy and Brothers Grunt), so many of them include direct inspiration from specific title cards.  This one includes references to 'Run For Your Ed' and 'Hot Buttered Ed'.  Those shows' original title cards were painted manually by the incredibly talented Kathy Boake W and I hope my digital paintings can do them any justice!

BONUS STUFF:

Here's the painting without text, followed by my original concept art:

Smashbits #29: "TV Pilot" - Intergalactic Pizza Delivery Guy Ep 3

This was originally ten 3-minute-episodes that ended up getting edited together a little weird, Part 3 consists of episodes 101 (the opening flashback) and 108-110.  In Part 3, I contributed to parts of 101, and 90% of the faces for 109-110.  Weird story about that: some of the faces in this part don't match what I animated, and seem like someone decided to animate their own faces before it was released.  There are also strange glitches that are only noticeable to me because I had to look at the files for so long-- the red blob with blue highlights/shadows in the flashback was blue when I looked at him in the files, I don't know how he got changed to red in their final version...

It's hard to say whether this or episode 1 was my least favorite part to work on, they were similarly nightmarish and discombobulated, but this one ended with me having to stay up 22 hrs and then going to Father's Day with in-laws on 3 hrs of sleep the next day.  The very  last things I did for this episode, in that 22nd hour, were animate the shot of the window breaking when Una punches Flannery's tuba off, and the plate smashing (as well as changing angle and having to re-kerjigger how everyone else was framed in the shot).

Good News: Next week I'll start posting the EEnE-style title cards I teased a few posts ago!  And the commissioner for that just asked me to work on a few more this month, at least there will be digital paintings to come!  (Any input on how I should post those?  All at once?  Dole them out in detailed posts?)

Smashbits #28: "TV Pilot" - Intergalactic Pizza Delivery Guy Ep 2

Meant to put this up on Monday but I'm still a little out of sync with the world after being in so deep with this project for 2 months, whoops!

This is probably my favorite of the episodes, because it's the most emotional set of storylines, and also because I was under the least stress with the deadline for this act of the pilot.  In case you're curious, since the original ten 3-minute-episodes ended up getting edited together a little weird, Part 2 consists of episodes 101 (the opening flashback) and 105-107.

The drama for this one is relatively simple.  This was at the point where I had been forced, due to their own negligence, to give up my original high-budget agreement, and just do faces and a handful of fixes for half the budget.  Throughout this stage of the project, even though I was ahead of my deadline, Smashbits' representatives would not trust me and kept insisting that I was gonna be late and trying to take episodes back from my order so that they could cut my budget more, without communicating any reason the deadlines may be different than on my original agreement.  Then they just went ahead and assigned faces for episodes 106 and 108 to their in-house team without telling me (they did suggest doing that weeks in advance, but again, they didn't ask before they went ahead and did it, I had been committing to doing it all) and I was forced to drop another quarter of what was left of my budget.  It kinda killed my mood for the project after this, but it did make this episode's deadline easier and I do feel like this was the most I enjoyed drawing faces.  I made myself invested in Frank's relationships with Pablo, Sean and Frank's dad.

Here's a lighter story:  Frank's dad was one of a handful of characters who were going to be up to me to design in my original agreement.  Although he is shown to be Frank's biological human father here (and in an early concept I found, named erroneously"Farnk's Dad," which is his name in my mind), I was originally told Farnk Dad could be imagined as an adoptive alien dad instead of I wanted.  I hope I remember to post my small handful of attempts I made to design a weird alien dad before this project killed me..

Anyway, I think that sums up the production of this one...  Enjoy the faces!  I also did that crazy shot where Pablo crashes the ship and the camera zooms in.

Smashbits #27: "TV Pilot" - Intergalactic Pizza Delivery Guy Ep 1

Once again, I'm crawling back out of the shadows with something Smashbits begged me to be a part of!  This one was ROUGH and I'm gonna tell you the gritty details, but if nothing else, I'm proud to say this is at least one of the LONGEST animations I've ever been a part of.  That said, it consumed every waking moment of the past 2 months that wasn't already occupied by my dayjob, and I had to spend all of Saturday (almost 22 hrs) animating to get the last part done by the deadline.

The Details:

INTERGALACTIC PIZZA DELIVERY GUY ("IPDG" and "Pizza Guy" for short) was picked up by Octopie as a web series to be animated by Smashbits and potentially be pitched as a proof-of-concept pilot to networks like Adult Swim.  It is the "beloved" pet project of Dexter Manning, who I previously collaborated with on Smashbits' Minecraft Story Mode and Hello Neighbor parodies, two of their most viewed videos, as well as an Overwatch parody I jumped ship on.  This "Original Cartoon" is based heavily on his most popular project with Smashbits, If Undertale Was Realistic, using the same voices and basic roles of the characters from Undertale, as well as the first letters of their names.

The Backstory:

Smashbit started this project 8 MONTHS AGO, deciding not to bring me in, even though I did their other TV project and have worked with Dexter's cringe-comedy material before.   No, they put a whole underpaid in-house team on this, and nobody liked the cartoon so it all came back looking lifeless and boring.  Needless to say, Dexter and Octopie were disappointed that this was their best effort.  2 MONTHS AGO, they spent a whole day trying to get me on the phone, even though I protested I was too busy. They promised a huge budget, that half the project was already done and the characters were already modeled, leading me to believe this could be as simple as my Hello Neighbor short. 

Unfortunately, it turned out they animated it all in the latest version of Flash, and I have used the same ancient version since 2004.  So I was immediately faced with numerous issues getting the new program up to date and making all the Flash files work.  This cartoon is currently being released as 3 roughly 10-minute episodes, but it was originally 10 3-minute episodes that were deemed too boring on their own, and are now awkwardly stitched together.  I worked on these by every 3-minute section, and each one was broken down into 5-7 files. Out of the 10 eps, I worked on 101-105, 107, 109-10, making that like 50 files to keep track of. 

So I immediately fell behind because they didn't realize how much work they were asking me to do, and we had to downsize me to just tweaking details and fixing certain faces in eps 101-103, and then animating pretty much nothing BUT the faces for the rest of my eps, and some small scene fixes, while Smashbits finished animating the rest of the episodes.  This was still incredibly boring to sit through, endlessly looping the terrible dialogue and scratch audio, and ended up not being much relief on me at all.  Still, they repeatedly cut my budget due to this, making it much less than I wanted to be paid for all this time. I hated it and I'm glad it's over.

That's all I can remember to say right now that I was directly involved in.  I'll post Part 2 next week with anything else I can think of-- it'll have more of my faces, and has some more interesting  developments than this episode.   In case you're curious, since the 10 episodes ended up getting edited together a little weird, Part 1 consists of episodes 102-104.  The last scene of episode 101 was converted into the "first day" scene in this episode.

Something that wasn't my fault:  THE WEIRD LIGHTING EFFECT ON EVERYONE.  I don't know why they thought that should be a thing, it's really distracting from the faces, I think.  It makes me really confused about what's wrong with the light source on this story's planet.

Parker Plays S2E4 - First Job [As Seen On TV]

Available in full quality thanks to Disney XD uploading this season's 2 full Parker cartoons to their official Youtube!  Look out for where I hid my name if you didn't see it already...

Originally posted here as Smashbits #24, made July 2018, and original TV airdate was November 5, 2018.  (Why they didn't use this Halloween cartoon for the episode on October 29 is beyond me...)

This clip starts about 14 minutes into Season 2 episode 4, check your On Demand if you'd like to watch more Parker Plays on Disney XD!

Parker Plays S2E3 - Space Team [As Seen On TV]

 Just the cartoon!  Available in full quality thanks to Disney XD uploading this season's 2 full Parker cartoons to their official Youtube!  Isn't that neato?  I'm not even sure if they've uploaded anything live action from the season, it seems like that channel focused exclusively on my contribution... awww!   

I also made my own recording from my DVR if you'd rather watch the clip with the brief live action introduction (which at least provides context for the fast food story):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNVzTbyye8I

Originally posted here as Smashbits #22, made June 2018, and original TV airdate was  October 29, 2018.  

This game starts about 11 minutes into Season 2 episode 3, and the actual cartoon starts around 14 and half minutes into the episode, check your On Demand if you'd like to watch more Parker Plays on Disney XD!

Parker Plays S2E3 - Space Team Full Scene [As Seen On TV]

So normally I just upload MY clips from Parker Plays, but I thought this cartoon might be hard to understand out of context.  The full raw-footage they gave me to explain what I was supposed to draw was barely half of what plays here, so I feel like seeing the full clip REALLY helps explain what this game is about..  Nobody explained to me that the footage I was shown would be different from the live action edit, so imagine my confusion when I watched the episode and heard my scenes' audio as part of the live action scene!  I thought they had scrapped my cartoon, but thankfully, it was part of the   I will also upload a version with just the cartoon, but I appreciated how they integrated my cartoon into the challenge.  The photo of Pink Parker comes from the lost 3rd short that never made it to TV in season 1 (but was posted on here last year)

(that lost short is right here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/smashbits-17-xd-14193344   ...remember, they only gave me like a few days to make 'em back then)

Originally posted here as Smashbits #22, made June 2018, and original TV airdate was  October 29, 2018.  

This game starts about 11 minutes into Season 2 episode 3, and the actual cartoon starts around 14 and half minutes into the episode, check your On Demand if you'd like to watch more Parker Plays on Disney XD!

Parker Plays S1E1 - Park Parker [As Seen On TV]

And to finish off my triple-update, here's a better quality recording of my very first clip from Parker Plays on Disney XD!  Originally posted here as Smashbits #15, made from May-June 2017, and original TV airdate was July 15, 2017. 

This clip happens around 7 minutes into the first episode, which should still be available for free on Youtube:  https://youtu.be/393TiRtCQtg 

Parker Plays S1E9 - Giant Cop [As Seen On TV]

 Originally posted here as Smashbits #16, made from May-June 2017, and original TV airdate was August 1, 2017.  

This clip happens around 18 minutes into the 9th episode, check your On Demand if you'd like to watch more Parker Plays on Disney XD!

Part Two of my update!  The long-awaited recording of my second clip on Parker Plays on Disney XD, which I had hoped to find online last year but never could.  Now, thanks to SlingTV, I finally have access to every episode (for now at least) and just got done recording all of my clips for you guys to unload over the next two weeks. I'm still impressed how well this clip matched the game that plays before it, and I still love all the sound editing jokes Digomind Productions added, that's what I most wanted you guys to see!  This is also the episode where they added credits for me and Smashbits, so this is technically my first TV credit, although it should be the 2nd.

I'll be the first to admit, these season 1 clips are a lot.. chunkier and rougher looking than the season 2 clips.  But to be fair, I only had like a week and hardly any pay to make the season 1 clips, I didn't even know what the games looked like.  Unfortunately my 3rd season 1 clip never aired (it was pretty rough looking, but also Parker's party-barfing subject matter probably wasn't up to Disney's code), but they did salvage art from that clip for a little easter egg in season 2 and make Parker interact with it.  Look forward to that next week!

Parker Plays S2E2 - Cold Open + Theme Clip [As Seen On TV]

Sorry for the delay on posting my TV-aired Parker Plays animations, I had a hell of a time trying to get payment from Smashbits and the past few months have been a nightmare, but I'm back and I've prepared my recordings!  To make up for the delay, this includes both my short cold open animation and the Season 2 theme song, which includes a clip of next week's short, and then I will also post my 2 clips from Season 1!

Originally posted here as Smashbits #23, made June-July 2018, and original TV airdate was  October 22, 2018.  

This clip happens RIGHT at the start of Season 2 episode 2, check your On Demand if you'd like to watch more Parker Plays on Disney XD!

Smashbits #24: DISNEY XD - Parker Plays First Job FINISHED ANIMATION

This will most likely be my last Parker Plays short unless Disney XD picks them up for a third season, but they decided to end this season's animated sequences with one that's fully animated with no live action!  It was a complicated one to board because I had no script, just a live action video of Parker telling the story (while wearing a weird dickey that looked like the top of a work shirt and tie draped over his t-shirt, while he wore a VR helmet), yet the sound effects were already mixed in there by Digomind Productions, so that limited how much I could add.  Halloween Store backgrounds were very busy and involved, and this short had a lot of new extras to design, so I took liberties where I could and got it done right on the deadline, and I'm pretty satisfied for the results.  Thanks to Erica Lordi for doing the coloring in the final animation!  Be sure to look for my hidden name in one of the backgrounds...

So now that Parker's done, I've gone back to focusing on the Hoop-a-Joop short film's backgrounds and they're coming along beautifully!  Erica's coming back to work at my dayjob again this week so that's exciting for us, and I hope that change opens up some opportunities that could put our Those Friggin Ferrets series back on the table.  Wish us luck and thank you all so much for sticking with us!

Smashbits #23: DISNEY XD - Parker Plays Cold Open FINISHED ANIMATION

Here's the most CINEMATIC Parker Plays animation I'll probably ever do!  It's only a 5 second gag but it's going to be the cold opening to an episode in Season 2 so I wanted to really sell that "expensive animation" gag.  I got this one done ahead of schedule, so I also used it as an opportunity to flex my higher quality animation style while I'm getting screentime on TV.  It'll also be some nice practice for my Hoop short film...

Interesting process for this one, they sent me a live action version of this. I used screenshots from it to test out the gag at the end where it cuts back to live action.  In the real version I sent them, the ending is transparent so they can mesh my animated filmreel into the live action setting.  But Parker wasn't actually doing much for the part they wanted animated, and I could have been really lazy about that, I don't think they would have stopped me, they just wanted it to have shading.  That sounded boring and not fun to animate, though, so I boarded up Parker doing a Daffy-Duck-esque bounce around the room.  They were really into the idea, and it gave me a much simpler way to approach the shading, so great!  I decided to be really unorthodox and turn the storyboards into a pencil test, and then moved straight into the cleaned up animation.

Smashbits #22: DISNEY XD - Parker Plays Space Team FINISHED ANIMATION

Two weeks ago I hinted at a special Smashbits project, and here it is... That's right, Parker Plays got picked up for a second season and asked for me to do another short sequence for them!  Turns out season 1 has been playing every weekday, so apparently it's been picking up in the ratings and my shorts from last year have actually been getting quite a bit of exposure, so that's exciting.  Season 2 has only been ordered for 6 episodes, so we'll see if I get asked to animate any other shorts-- I have been asked to do a really quick 5 second gag that will be used to open one of the episodes though, that's the project I'm starting next!  Even if these two projects are all they need from me this season, it's an honor to come back and I've already added "2 seasons of a Disney XD show" to my animation resume!

The first 13 seconds are blank because that part will be in live action, and cut to the backgrounds I drew as they describe them.  The short really begins at 35 seconds.  The game they are playing is called Space Team and it took me FOREVER to understand what was going on-- trust me the reference footage they sent DID NOT help...  But I did eventually figure out it's a mobile game and that's why they need to SHAKE at one point.  It also really asks the players to do all those things.

Al + Jim in "HOOP-A-JOOP" - Silent Short Film Animatic

Here's a small update to the short film animatic I shared earlier this year!  Just a couple new shots and some adjusted timing from before I started working on the backgrounds.  This short film technically doubles as a pilot for my TV series idea, Hoop-a-Joop, which you can read about on my art blog:

https://thatsdisturbing.tumblr.com/tagged/hoopajoop

And while backgrounds are always my slowest part of a project, I can't wait til they're all done!  I've been planning to make these very detailed so I can show them off eventually.  Here's two low-res previews of the big camera pan in the opening-- between how large it is and the various animated elements it's hard to export it high-res right now.  I taught myself how to make a fake lens flare and that background lighthouse light will be animated as well.

Shippy Art: EdMay and EddEddy (Preliminary Sketch)

 This is the preliminary sketch for a commission I did over April for my friend and patron Cassie, aka NintendoGal55!   She requested a nice scene of Ed n May and Edd n Eddy aged up and feeling flustered in the back of the junkyard van.  In this draft, I was able to figure out most of the aspects for these older versions of the characters, but you may notice I changed Eddy's shirt in the final draft!  Finding the right colors for Ed and Eddy's outfits was challenging and made it apparent that Eddy's polo shirt wasn't making him look older enough.

Shippy Art: EdMay and EddEddy

This is a commission I did over April for my friend and patron Cassie, aka NintendoGal55!   She requested a nice scene of Ed n May and Edd n Eddy aged up and feeling flustered in the back of the junkyard van.  I always have the hardest time trying to come up with older designs for the Eds, especially their outfits, but I was quite satisfied with the results here!

Smashbits #21: Overwatch Music Video - "One Of A Kind" -RELEASED ANIMATION-

WOW, busy night for released Overwatch animations, huh?  I just found out the client released this on April Fool's Day!  That certainly helps explain why it's so goofy.  I hope you enjoy, I'm excited to finally start showing this thing to people!

Behind the Scenes: 

Near the end of January, Smashbits asked me to do this and it was my highest budget freelance project so far!  However I only had 8 weeks to do it so it was quite a bit of stress.  That's not a lot of time to design so many detailed characters, make an animatic, make all the backgrounds and animate all the characters and props.  Throughout the production, Smashbits was on my back about how the client would not give us any deadline extensions.  It was a hell of a time, but I must say I'm really proud of the results! It had been far too long since I animated something so traditionally and I impressed myself so I feel good. I hope you guys enjoy it, it's a lot more complicated to make than it looks, haha!

Erica Lordi (my wife) deserves a lot of credit on this cartoon!  After I finished the first four shots, I stopped coloring and focused just on finishing animation.  From that point on, Erica colored every frame of every character and most weapons, with just a handful of stray details that I colored myself (usually just props).   She even colored the lip sync, which is a whole other step!

Production went right down to the final hours of the deadline, and it ended with us staying up all night on a Saturday until 3pm the next day.  Erica and I slept in 4 hour shifts to trade off on the animation and coloring stages and managed to get it done on time!  Theeeeennn, Smashbits didn't reply for two days and when I finally asked them if they gave it to the client, they told me they didn't because of a moving emergency... so apparently THEY could have emergency deadline extensions but not the people doing the work, who didn't have any free time for 8 weeks.  Sadly, that's typical of the animation industry.  That delayed the client from asking for corrections (although most of them were things they could've asked for earlier in production), so even though we worked ourselves to death so that they could release it in March, they ended up releasing it for April Fool's Day.

Smashbits #19-20: Overwatch RELEASED ANIMATION

Remember those two episodes of an unreleased Smashbits Overwatch cartoon I hated and quit before I completed?  Well, the studio apparently had somebody else finish them as quickly as possible and combined the two bad cartoons into ONE bad cartoon to release this past weekend.  Now for your schadenfreude, I present this cartoon!  

I recommend you watch my new Overwatch music video instead, which I uploaded last week. Now that's an animation I'm actually proud of:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/smashbits-21-one-17808250

I couldn't bear to watch this whole thing, the changes they made are questionable and none of the updates to the jokes or voices are improvements to me... But I got a laugh out of that credits sequence where the owner of Smashbits forgets to credit me and almost forgets the name of the new animator.  Then the new animator, looking unwilling to appear in the video, reminds him that I was the original animator and the owner acts like he never knew that, even though he had to email me last month to get the video files.  They should really consider getting a good take for those live action behind the scenes videos...

Here's a synopsis of what I had to say about these episodes when I uploaded them here and here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/smashbits-19-ep1-16516347

https://www.patreon.com/posts/smashbits-20-ep2-16516631

This is my least favorite Smashbits thing I've done...  Basically, they had me start on this after the hurricane in September 2017 and set it up as a really simple project with good pay because it was for Machinima. By the time I was done (and it was a struggle to produce on top of everything else that was going on those months, including a funeral), the director who gave me the project had left the company and the owner of Smashbits finally got in touch with me for the first time in a while and admitted this script wasn't funny, the material wasn't suited for my style (they kept asking for funny faces and I kept pointing out most of the characters don't HAVE faces, which is why I attempted to use the Hello Neighbor style again), and most importantly, I don't know ANYTHING about Overwatch, did not get any of the jokes, and very little was explained to me.

I completed all of Ep 1 and even started an animatic for Ep 2 because they were planning this to be a series.  The writing for Ep 2 was so weak that I gave up and quit the project-- The writers ended up being unable to come up with enough material to even fill their runtime and were looking to me to extend bits, which is hard to do at my stage of the production, but I was having enough trouble just trying to understand the action scenes they'd padded the script with.  Ultimately it was too much responsibility for me alone to be trying to make this look good, especially because I had clearly set this up for a sillier jankier style and not all the faux-drama ep 2 employs. 

I had no idea if these were even gonna be released anymore, they seemed to be considering the whole endeavor a loss before I even started ep 2.  But here it is!

Smashbits #21: Overwatch Music Video - "One Of A Kind" -Full Animation-

Woo!  Near the end of January, Smashbits asked me to do this and it was my highest budget freelance project so far!  However I only had 8 weeks to do it so it was quite a bit of stress.  That's not a lot of time to design so many detailed characters, make an animatic, make all the backgrounds and animate all the characters and props.  Throughout the production, Smashbits was on my back about how the client would not give us any deadline extensions.  It was a hell of a time, but I must say I'm really proud of the results! It had been far too long since I animated something so traditionally and I impressed myself so I feel good. I hope you guys enjoy it, it's a lot more complicated to make than it looks, haha!

Erica Lordi (my wife) deserves a lot of credit on this cartoon!  After I finished the first four shots, I stopped coloring and focused just on finishing animation.  From that point on, Erica colored every frame of every character and most weapons, with just a handful of stray details that I colored myself (usually just props).   She even colored the lip sync, which is a whole other step!

Production went right down to the final hours of the deadline, and it ended with us staying up all night on a Saturday until 3pm the next day.  Erica and I slept in 4 hour shifts to trade off on the animation and coloring stages and managed to get it done on time!  Theeeeennn, Smashbits didn't reply for two days and when I finally asked them if they gave it to the client, they told me they didn't because of a moving emergency... so apparently THEY could have emergency deadline extensions but not the people doing the work, who didn't have any free time for 8 weeks.  Sadly, that's typical of the animation industry.  That delayed the client from asking for corrections (although most of them were things they could've asked for earlier in production), so even though we worked ourselves to death so they could release it last Friday, they still haven't released it.  I'll let you guys know when it comes out for real!

Smashbits #21: Overwatch Music Video - "One Of A Kind" -Animatic-

Woo!  Near the end of January, Smashbits asked me to do this and it was my highest budget freelance project so far!  However I only had 8 weeks to do it so it was quite a bit of stress.  That's not a lot of time to design so many detailed characters, make an animatic, make all the backgrounds and animate all the characters and props.  Throughout the production, Smashbits was on my back about how the client would not give us any deadline extensions.  It was a hell of a time, but I must say I'm really proud of the results! It had been far too long since I animated something so traditionally and I impressed myself so I feel good. I hope you guys enjoy it, it's a lot more complicated to make than it looks, haha!

Al + Jim in "HOOP-A-JOOP" - A Silent Rough Animatic For A Short Film

Here's a short film project I've been developing between my freelance work!  I'm very excited to share this, I've been hinting at it for a while, and meant to show you all the storyboards first, but... oh well!  This is the animatic, which is the stage after storyboards that allows you to time out how the cartoon will look when fully animated.  

I've been talking to a composer about planning out a score for this and he's done some demo tracks already but we haven't tried anything timed out to this yet.  We might hold off on that until this is finally animated.  I'm planning to animate this mostly by myself at the moment, although it is going to have to remain a free time project for now.  (I just got assigned a new Smashbits project that should be fun!)

This short film will be great for doubling as a pilot to my TV series idea, Hoop-a-Joop, which you can read about on my art blog:

https://thatsdisturbing.tumblr.com/tagged/hoopajoop

I won't get my hopes up that this will sell as a pilot, but this cartoon has really been a long time in the making.  This aquarium story has been rethought several times since I was 12 years old in seventh grade (I am currently in my 20s). Sometime I'll probably share some really old drafts of it, since I've posted another Hoop pilot years ago... For now, here is last year's draft of the short film you see before you... but in storyboard form!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bf0ylj0ktuj7zr9/AAAULC9X1kgAJOZc_KyeAsDga?dl=0

Glip Creek 2: Gliphead - Preliminary Sketches

Here's the preliminary sketches for a commission I just finished today that I'm very happy with!  It's The Glippo Show Eds from my Glip Creek commission meeting the jawbreaker enemies from Cuphead and doing what Eds do best.

Here's a link to my original Glip Creek art: 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/6614508

Glip Creek 2: Gliphead

Here's a commission I just finished today that I'm very happy with!  It's The Glippo Show Eds from my Glip Creek commission meeting the jawbreaker enemies from Cuphead and doing what Eds do best.

Here's a link to my original Glip Creek art: 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/6614508

And of course this is based on The Glippo Show scene from 'Ed n Seek':

Smashbits #20: Overwatch Ep2 ANIMATIC

This is my least favorite Smashbits thing I've done so I'm just gonna post a few things related to it and then post a better commission I did earlier today!

This is the half of ep 2 I did an animatic of before quitting this project.  The writers ended up being unable to come up with enough material to even fill their runtime and were looking to me to extend bits, but I was having enough trouble just trying to understand the action scenes they'd pad the script with.  Ultimately it was too much responsibility for me alone to be trying to make this look good (especially because I had clearly set up for a sillier jankier style and not all this faux-drama) and since then I've taken a break from Smashbits.  Get ready to see more original stuff again!

Smashbits #19: Overwatch Ep1 FINAL ANIMATION

This is my least favorite Smashbits thing I've done so I'm just gonna post a few things related to it and then post a better commission I did earlier today!

Basically, they had me start on this after the hurricane in September and set it up as a really simple project with good pay because it was for Machinima. By the time I was done (and it was a struggle to produce on top of everything else that was going on those months), the director who gave me the project had left the company and the owner of Smashbits finally got in touch with me for the first time in a while and admitted this script wasn't funny, the material wasn't suited for my style (they kept asking for funny faces and I kept pointing out most of the characters don't HAVE faces, which is why I attempted to use the Hello Neighbor style again), and most importantly, I don't know ANYTHING about Overwatch, did not get any of the jokes, and very little was explained to me.

I completed all of Ep 1 and even started an animatic for Ep 2 because they were planning this to be a series.  The writing for Ep 2 was so weak that I gave up and quit the project-- I have no idea if these are even gonna be released anymore, they seemed to be considering the whole endeavor a loss.

I have been on an indefinite break from Smashbits until they have better projects for me.  I'll be working on commissions and some original Hoop-a-Joop stuff that I want to start doling out on here when I have more time again.

Smashbits #19: Overwatch Ep1 ANIMATIC

This is my least favorite Smashbits thing I've done so I'm just gonna post a few things related to it and then post a better commission I did earlier today!

Basically, they had me start on this after the hurricane in September and set it up as a really simple project with good pay because it was for Machinima. By the time I was done (and it was a struggle to produce on top of everything else that was going on those months), the director who gave me the project had left the company and the owner of Smashbits finally got in touch with me for the first time in a while and admitted this script wasn't funny, the material wasn't suited for my style (they kept asking for funny faces and I kept pointing out most of the characters don't HAVE faces, which is why I attempted to use the Hello Neighbor style again), and most importantly, I don't know ANYTHING about Overwatch, did not get any of the jokes, and very little was explained to me.

I completed all of Ep 1 and even started an animatic for Ep 2 because they were planning this to be a series.  The writing for Ep 2 was so weak that I gave up and quit the project-- I have no idea if these are even gonna be released anymore, they seemed to be considering the whole endeavor a loss.

I have been on an indefinite break from Smashbits until they have better projects for me.  I'll be working on commissions and some original Hoop-a-Joop stuff that I want to start doling out on here when I have more time again.

EEnE Secret Santa 2017 - Preliminary Sketches

Here are the first couple drafts of my giftart for Jenny2x4!