felixcolgrave

DONKS OST: Props Department

This is still going! I wasn't really sure how to extend this track for ages and scrapped a few attempts, then one day it suddenly clicked in my head and then the bulk of it happened in a day or two.

There are so few bits of DONKS music left to extend now aaaa!!

The only definite full tracks remaining are probably "big stompy guy" and "submarine getting eaten" (not the actual titles). Other than that there's also some spooky ambience when the submarine's looking at the donks writh...

Gremlin Cat

Animating the cat in the movie, doing some actual cat stuff!

I draw pictures of my cat all the time, and I love trying to capture all his facial expressions, but I haven't animated that many cats before- so I'll be learning on the job how to make a cat move like a cat!

This is modeled on my own cat to such an extent, that I feel bad for making him into an antagonist (and making him green with nasty little hands). Perhaps Gremlin Cat will redeem himself in the st...

Constellation Computations

Hello lovely friends, and a large thank you for your support this month!!! Welcome to September!

Here is a hand drawn paper animation, of a computer, generating a digital animation! It's connecting these star points in different configurations to make different critters.

Fun fact: While there are 5 floating stars in the animation, they're all following the same path. So if you follow one with your eye and watch the loop 5 times, it has a turn being every star! I get lost trying to...

Corner Cat

Who's in the corner? It's corner cat, having some nice dreams!

Portable TV

An old TV with legs. I hadn't really thought about how a TV with legs is a robot, until I stuck the legs on, and to my surprise I suddenly had a little robot made out of 70's-appliance plastic wood.

 Wow!

He was made just for this one scene, but he might have to be a recurring character because I really like him

How To Wrap Grandmother in a Cozy Blanket

Have you ever had a 2D grandmother you needed to swaddle in a blanket, but your redrawn blanket wasn't detailed and cozy enough? Same!

I tried out a solution to "the grandmother problem" here, and it probably wasn't that efficient, but I don't need to draw this character very much so it doesn't matter.

It's similar to this test I did a while back, only here I'm distorting a fabric patter...

Clock

Here's a wall clock!

My plan for this film so far has been to do 2D characters and 3D backgrounds- but these kinds of rules raise lots of questions. What if a piece of furniture is also a character kind of??

In this instance, I've elected to make this clock guy 3D. Other anthropomorphic home wares might still be 2D if I feel like it, because these rules are completely made up. They're not real!!!

I enjoyed doing the 3D clock though- this film is almost entirely set indoors, ...

Talltoise

Hello you lovely human! Welcome to August, and thank you for your support this month!!!!!

This month's paper animation is a very leggy tortoise thing, tumbling its way through the desert.

I swear it was all drawn in the month of July, even though I'm sure some of you might notice that frame number 13 is dated "JUN" instead of "JUL". That's just because they're too similar and right next to each other and this is ink, I didn't want to redraw my whole tortoise. I will pack and send ...

a background inside itself

Hi everyone, here's a background for the rat movie! The background also doubles as a frame for the next scene, so to demonstrate, here it is inside itself!

At the beginning of this piece, I did a test animation of a rat in some walls with a background kinda similar to this. Those walls were a bit old timey, like they had stone masonry and dirt floors in them and stuff. Now that the film is u...

RAT PIT

Hello all, here's a rat clawing its way out of a pit!

So far in this movie about rats, the rats haven't been that much of a focus, and I haven't actually had to draw that much of them other than a single run cycle. But now that we're at the "Scurrying and Scampering" phase of the operation, I'm happy to discover I've conveniently given myself a really simple character design to work with. This means I can easily redraw them with the writhing, horrible frenetic energy needed for rat busi...

going around in rectangles

Hello hello and THANK YOU for your support this fine July. I hope you had a good solstice, be it winter or summer! Here we celebrate by doing our taxes and it's cold, and that's about it.

I'm pleased to report that thanks to your support, I've completed the first... chapter? act?? of the film I'm making!
There is no predetermined structure to this film so I don't know if it's going to have 3, or 5, or 100 acts (obviously not that one I would die), but if this was a movie with acts I...

The film has a name now

I've already made the title card, so I guess the name is locked in. (It's WALL WORLD!)

The rat is back (in a drain pipe)

This may just look like your typical "pipe rat" to a casual observer, but this moment is actually pretty significant to me. Because these rats, who are the main characters, haven't been on screen in their own film for a little while. I haven't drawn a rat in ages!

This rat reappearance also marks the end of a long shot, at the end of a long sequence, that I guess you could call the "prologue"? The prologue is basically done!

A prologue that included 53 different animated charact...

Help I'm locked inside a gif

Wait no it's ok I've got a key!

DONKS: BONKS

More DONKS music!!! This one is called BONKS, and it's an extension of the ~10 seconds of music that played during the bit with the spiky ball, just before it becomes a dog.

Also just a potential ***FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING*** regarding the visualizer here?? It's just a disc spinning, so no strobing or anything, but the disc spins fast so it is kind of flickery in moments. Just a heads up!

Anyway I've already done the 2024-06-05 00:38:42 +0000 UTC View Post

Being Watched

Hello everyone! Hope you're keeping warm, or staying cool, as the Earth tips ever further on its axis! Here's an animation I made in a garage while wrapped in several blankets.

It's a sky cat, stalking a ground man. I'm not sure if the cat intends on catching the man, or if it's even possible for the cat to reach the ground, but I suppose it's all about the chase!

As always, the original frames are being sent off to Pen Pals in the next day or so.

And of course a big thank y...

How To Make Myself

This is still for the rat thing! I have a brief acting role in the movie, as myself, and so this is a little peek of how I got inside cartoon world and did a walk cycle.

You might notice I also took photos of myself doing things other than walking, but I have not animated those ones yet!

Photo collage isn't going to be a constant in the film- it was just necessary in this one short bit, for some reason. Photo Felix is also on screen at the same time as drawn animation AND 3D, so I...

Menagerie

I'm still working on this shot, but this gif is the first time I've seen any of it play back at the right speed. Anyway here, have some mammals!

Cow and Lemur

Here's a red ruffed lemur riding a Hereford. They don't have much to do with anything else happening in the film, but they still happen, so I still had to draw them.

Headballs

Hello all you lovely people! I hope you're having a lovely day, and THANK YOU so much for your support this month!

Work continues on my newest film (the one about rats), and it's shaping up to be a long one- something I couldn't do without you guys!

Unrelated, but here's a bird body with some interchangeable head balls. Is it still a bird when it has the other heads? I don't know! But if you're a Pen Pal then I'm going to send you one of these frames in the mail now.

Fly Trap Fields

I like how this background turned out, so here's a version of it that continues on forever

Extinct mammals in walk-cycle purgatory

A video!

So, I've been working on an evolution sequence for this film for quite a while now.

Before I could even begin animating, I had to map out evolutionary lines of several placental mammals and do a bunch of reading, and then run my grossly simplified science through a meat grinder of other considerations like "how do I fit all these animals on screen". The process got so daunting I got partway through, and then went back to add several other shots preceding it.

Since t...

Finally, a snail!

Wayyy back in my Patreon announcement video about 200 years ago, one of the things I said I wanted to do on here was "early access or discounts on limited edition signed prints". But then I didn't do any prints on which to offer that early access, or those discounts!

WelI thought I should finally change that, so here is a Risograph print of a snail, wearing a shoe!

These will be selling to the general public for $50 USD each, BUT for the next week, it's going to only be on a secre...

Cow Tipping

Something something can't fit a square cow into a round hole! Hello!!!!!!!!

Nice to see you this April, and thank you so much for your support this month! I hope you had a great vernal or autumnal equinox, depending on your location.

Here's a paper animation, of a cow not fitting into a UFO. Would it fit if he put the cow in head first? I dunno, I didn't have enough frames to include that, so I guess the alien will just never work it out.

If you're a Pen Pal you should recei...

How to wiggle a branch

Hi!!!! So I showed you a long branch a while ago, and here it is again. The branch is very long because it extends through several interconnected shots. Anyway here is me talking about how I made the branch wiggly in a really indirect way, as a workaround to get out of animating some stuff.

It sounds less thrilling when I say it out loud! But I thought it was a good example of how "animating" often consists of finding convoluted ways to avoid animating (at least for me anyway!)

An...

Sneeker & Peeker

Hello hello everyone!!! THANK YOU a bunch to patrons old and new for your support this month, and I hope you're having an agreeable start to Autumn, or Spring, or whatever the weather does in March where you live!

For this month's paper animation I tried something new- since I photograph these using a stop-motion setup anyway, I thought I'd include my stop-motion hand!

As usual the original paper frames will be shipped to Pen Pals in the next day or so, however obviously my hand...

Three Dee Tree

Hello, it's just me, with a tree, for a background! I hope this displays properly because it's very tall.

Like most of the background elements in the rat movie so far, it was modeled in 3D, but it's only going to be seen in the film as a flat image.

I first drew a sketch in Adobe Animate, where I could animate my 2D characters interacting with it, and then I "traced" over my drawing in Blender with a 3D model. I thought there'd be more of a learning curve for doing environments l...

DONKS OST: Blockodile

Another extended bit of DONKS music! This is Blockodile. It's a bit of music that originally went for about 15 seconds in the film, accompanying a crocodile thing made of blocks, and then a caterpillar thing with a watering can for a head. Now you can live in that moment for a whole 1 minute and 30 seconds!

For those who don't know I'm gradually doing this to all the DONKS music to make an al...

more rats and also music

Hello! Here is a brief snippet of animation, and a longer snippet of music.

The reason the music is longer, is because this animation is the first moment in a long-ish musical sequence. I haven't finished animating the next bit, but I know it's all going to be set to the same beat, so I've been able to lay out some musical ground work and play around with different sounds.

The final music probably won't sound exactly like this, because once I've done the next bit of animation, it ...

eyes in a hole

My old friend and long time collaborator, "eyes in a hole", is back with us once again for another animated adventure! What have I got in store for "eyes in a hole" this time??? They look thrilled to be here in any case