Hello everyone and THANK YOU for your support this October, and also generally!!!
I've been informed this is the "frightening month", so I have a thematically appropriate paper animation for you: it's got a Spider!
The spider is not particularly frightening, nor is she frightened- though you could say she is startled, or bewildered, or maybe overwhelmed, by two flies who keep sticking and un-sticking to her web. Tricked by her own treats!!!
The frames of this animation ar...
2022-10-02 10:51:53 +0000 UTC
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Donkball is a game where you throw your body parts at someone. (NOT recommended unless you are made of Donks!!!!!!)
These two gifs are from an energetic exchange between two donk entities- but which one will win the title of Ultimate Donk?? Actually that's a horrible sounding title, never mind
2022-09-23 07:06:24 +0000 UTC
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Introducing the worst character so far: Stairs Donk!
The only thing that makes Stairs Donk a character and not just stairs is the addition of some eyeballs, which directly interfere with their functionality as stairs. Also, there's nothing for them to actually look at other than the bum of whoever just stepped on their eyes.
2022-09-13 05:05:05 +0000 UTC
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Hello all and THANK YOU for your support this September!!! And happy Spring or Autumn, depending on your hemisphere!
Speaking of HEMISPHERES, here's a tiny planet that I animated all wrong, where the sun is only ever on top and the moon is only ever on the bottom! It would probably be a horrible planet to live on but I think it just looked better this way.
The frames of this paper animation will be shipped off to Pen Pals in the coming days.
These monthly loops aside, all...
2022-09-02 06:16:40 +0000 UTC
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Hello all!
I haven't really shown much behind-the-scenes stuff when it comes to the music and audio side of my projects. But music is a pretty key part of Donks, so I thought I should share some kind of something!
The format I've arrived at is this recording of my nervous babbling, explaining how I made a shoe sing.
I hope it's interesting! When demonstrating technical stuff like this, I try to keep the focus on the principles at play rather than software specific jar...
2022-08-27 11:47:12 +0000 UTC
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A little clip from the film- sort of!
In the film there is only one worm, and it doesn't loop, and the singular worm does not have its own special worm theme music.
But for the sake of this post, I thought I'd do some wor(m)ld-building and immerse you in the slimy donk underground. It's comprised of all the same donks as the donk overground, but they seem grosser here for some reason!
(direct video link----> 2022-08-19 02:52:50 +0000 UTC
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Always adapting, donk critters need special legs to navigate an environment made of their own body parts
2022-08-10 06:39:35 +0000 UTC
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Hello hey hi and THANK YOU, to patrons old and new!!
Thanks to your support, progress continues to continue on my upcoming film DONKS, which I'm excited and impatient for you all to see!
There's still much to be done, but I'm far enough through it that I'm very much digging my way OUT, instead of digging my way in, if that makes sense.
In the meantime, I've got another paper loop for you to peep at. It's of two characters, or one character, I'm not sure!
Each of the in...
2022-08-02 06:24:44 +0000 UTC
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I hadn't realised that "going inside a mountain with a face" is a scenario I've already animated twice, until immediately after animating it a third time. In we go, once more!
2022-07-25 09:56:18 +0000 UTC
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The film is getting a little bit windy in this shot, and donks are blowing everywhere!!!
Or they will be at least. I haven't made the donks blowing everywhere yet, just this character doing a mime routine of walking into the wind. He assures me it will look much more convincing once there are donks blowing everywhere!
2022-07-19 04:56:33 +0000 UTC
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Some GIFs, of the next phase in donk evolution! The donks are joining together to create more complex forms, with articulate donk faces.
I hadn't quite expected faces made out of piles of donks to look so uncanny and gross, but also of course they do-and that's good I think??? They remind me of when I "see faces" in things, which is probably the right thing for them to evoke!
2022-07-14 03:05:45 +0000 UTC
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Another donk character. There's a lot of them and they keep changing! This one pecks and has too many feet. More details to come.
2022-07-08 13:08:46 +0000 UTC
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Hello all, and happy middle of the year!!! Hope you all had a nice winter or summer solstice, depending on your hemisphere of residence. Here it's winter, and I'm animating in a garage wearing pyjamas over top of my clothes over top of more pyjamas, and I've made you a ghost dog!
The frames of this ghost dog will be enveloped and sent off to Pen Pals today. And then, I will come back here and keep making Donks!!!
(direct link to ghost dog----> 2022-07-04 01:31:13 +0000 UTC
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boing zip whizzzzz patterpatterpatter bonk, here she comes!
Some of you may recognise this character design from an old test animation I made before officially starting donks. Now she's finally in the film!!! She's not an important character or anything, she's just there- and yet I kinda feel like this whole project was just so I had somewhere to put her. Enjoy your forever home, cartoon dog ball!
2022-07-01 06:54:54 +0000 UTC
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Like most of the shots in this film, I'm not sure how to describe what's happening here.
Where do those eyeballs think they're going???
2022-06-17 12:59:43 +0000 UTC
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Hello all you lot!!!! Here is this month's paper animation, of a morphing face! Each facial feature becomes the next one in a big loop- so each feature gets a turn being the horrible screaming mouth!
I usually put these out at the beginning of each month but as I mentioned in my last post, I delayed this time because I had COVID!
Thank you all for the well-wishes by the way! I was pretty much fine and got plenty of work done on DONKS- I just didn't want to go smearing disease al...
2022-06-09 00:53:41 +0000 UTC
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I'm partway through a sequence of characters dangling from chains (like this idiot here), and I'm animating them using a technique I've never used before- The Adobe Animate "parenting tool".
I don't know if the parenting tool is new, or has been there for years and I've quietly ignored it. It is a deeply confusing and unintuitive tool, which seems to fundamentally misunderstand the paper-doll animation technique I assume it's trying to emulate. BUT, a tool having it's own quirks can le...
2022-06-04 08:13:11 +0000 UTC
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Hello all!!! A huge big thank you to patrons old and new for supporting me this fine June.
Normally at the beginning of the month, I post a drawing or paper animation on here that I've made for my Pen Pals, and notify that I'm going to send the drawings out. But right now I'm in isolation with COVID-19!!! So not only am I not allowed to go to the post office, but I thought perhaps some Pen Pals might NOT like the idea of me touching paper with covid-fingers and sending it to their home...
2022-06-02 06:25:08 +0000 UTC
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Some caterpillar type thing! There's some caterpillar type thing in just about everything I make, and it's usually my favourite bit. I'm a man of simple pleasures- and that pleasure is caterpillars!
This one is going quite fast, despite only having one foot per orb (caterpillars are made of orbs). But where are they going????
Spoiler alert, we never find out because something happens to them--- but what????
I'm still animating that bit, but rest assured the answer involves mo...
2022-05-18 06:49:48 +0000 UTC
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Your next friend is being assembled! Still needs a few more bits though I reckon.
All the work-in-progress for this project looks like nonsense I know, but I assure you that in the film it will be contextualized nonsense, which is completely different!!!
2022-05-10 01:12:29 +0000 UTC
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(direct link---> https://vimeo.com/705248285/c1ca2203d6)
HELLO and happy May!!! Thank you to patrons old and new for your support, and welcome to anyone who has signed up since the DONKS trailer was released a couple of days ago. The cat is out of the bag now, so I better go make them donks!!!
Once again, this month's Pen Pal drawings come together to make a paper animation! This one is of a little...
2022-05-02 05:53:34 +0000 UTC
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Just a pair of friends who are comprised of donks, hanging out and doing nothing in particular. There's not much else to say on the matter, so I better go animate them doing something else!
2022-04-20 07:07:01 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone! So the film I'm making is now far enough into production that I'm ready to put out a teaser trailer. By "ready" I mean I've got enough footage to edit something together without giving everything away, and I can finally visualize myself finishing it at some point.
The film is being made organically without scripts or storyboards or anything, so I've got no measure of how long the film will be or how far through it I am (likely still a while). BUT, it's really starting t...
2022-04-18 06:43:39 +0000 UTC
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They walk! They wobble! Where are they wobbling off to?
The individual frames of this paper animation are also the Pen Pal drawings for this month, so I'll be wobbling them off to the post office today or tomorrow.
Also, HELLO! Thank you all for your support for another month- or maybe for the first time ever! Either way, I'm eternally grateful for you enabling my drawing of silly pictures.
For those of you who are new or aren't privy to my film updates, I AM primarily wo...
2022-04-04 02:24:26 +0000 UTC
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The donk characters are beginning to get more elaborate, and with that, the predominant style of this film is finally starting to reveal itself! After months of stumbling my way through basic 3D modelling and animating literal piles of rubbish, its nice to see that the rubbish assembled into characters- aka the technique that the entire film hinges on- is actually turning out fun and nice to look at. Or at least I think so, but I hope you do too!!!!
It seems like a good time to reitera...
2022-03-22 02:31:19 +0000 UTC
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...and yet, it's what they do! This will all sound like nonsense if you haven't read my previous posts about this project (sorry), but my donks are now alive, and all their latent animation potential is bursting out like a Cambrian Explosion made of trash. Not just because they're making stupid bodies that do everything in impractical ways, like these silly walk cycles here, but also because everything is suddenly progressing much faster.
After a lot of slow asset-building and world-bu...
2022-03-11 06:26:13 +0000 UTC
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Hello all you lovely people!!!
Thanks so much to patrons old and new for your support. I hope you're all safe and well!
Here is my first paper animation in a while- and without a doubt, the most complicated paper animation I've ever made! In fact, paper or digital, these if nothing else are the most drawn drawings I've ever had to draw for an animation.
The individual frames here are my Pen Pal drawings for the month (and will be shipped off in a day or two)- which is som...
2022-03-02 10:09:09 +0000 UTC
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More donk progress!
This short clip removed from context functions as a self portrait, of me cramming my misshapen 2-dimensional body into 3D animation, in the most awkward way possible.
A lot of the animation in this "3D" film is disguised 2D anyway, but this is definitely the most explicitly drawn bit so far. It's a silhouette though, so you can't prove anything!!!!
2022-02-17 05:45:49 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone, just a little update of some shiny eyeballs!
This is a character that you never get to see out of the shadows, and I thought rather than making some classic cartoony eyeballs floating in the dark, it'd be fun to try and create a "tapetum lucidum" effect- the layer of reflective tissue that makes some animals' eyes shine in the dark. That way, the character is further obscured because you don't directly see the eyes- just the light bouncing off of them.
The techniqu...
2022-02-11 03:23:06 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone!!!! A big hot THANKS to patrons old and new for your support this month, and your patience as I whittle away at my latest 'toon.
Here is a hungry cat who relies on you for food, expressing their needs to you. The original line art is one of the unique ink drawings I'm sending to Pen Pals, which will be shipped off in the next day or two.
January was a busy month, because I moved home!
This also means I moved home office- and now my paper animation setup, which ...
2022-02-03 06:24:16 +0000 UTC
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