felixcolgrave

Infinite Donk Tower

Hello you lovely friends!!!!

First off, thank you all so much for your patience!

It's been a slow start to the year in terms of updates because firstly, we've been moving home, and secondly, my current film project requires me to make a bunch of random 3D objects (donks)- and I reached an impasse in the film where before I can animate any more scenes, I need to make more donks!

So, here is a roundup of this month's Donks, wrapped up in a little animation test! This infini...

donks, which is the name of the movie

Hello! Here is the title card, and I guess logo(?), for my upcoming film. Not that I had much doubt, but the working title, "Donks", is now definitely the title of the film, because I have made the letters now.

A word doesn't feel like much of a post by itself, but all this 3D stuff is new to me and I was pretty happy with this! Nothing else is 3D in the film apart from the titular donks, but since the title is also "Donks", it kinda had to be made of donk, to illustrate the idea.
2022-01-09 10:52:27 +0000 UTC View Post

Snail recalls an amusing anecdote

Happy Year 22202222222 everybody! Many twos for all of yous.

Here is a snail who has just remembered something crazy that happened the other day. His line art was one of this month's Pen Pal drawings, so he's in an envelope and about to be sent to one of you (that's not the anecdote).

Thanks everyone for your support into the new year! I'm very excited and lucky that I can spend it making films for you to watch and (hopefully) enjoy, and I can't wait for you to all see my curren...

DONK ROUNDUP 2021

(direct link---> https://vimeo.com/661329686/5305526b75)

Hello!

So, for those who don't know, I've been making a hybrid 2D/3D film over the past few months where I make rudimentary 3D objects called "DONKS", which I then assemble into characters like my own special Lego and animate them in 2D (like this initial test). 2021-12-31 02:14:39 +0000 UTC View Post

The bottom of the sea

Hello! Here's a very tall image from the film. The film is not as tall as this image of course, so only a bit of it will be on the screen at once in the final thing. But if your TV was very tall, I guess it would look something like this!

This scene is meant to be the bottom of the ocean, which ends in a big drip! I don't explain the big drip, so I can only hope people watching the film will just accept the big drip in context and move on.

I can't tell if it makes less or more v...

Chambered Nautilus

Direct link----> https://vimeo.com/656818461/b96c1a1524

Hello hello! Here's an animation of a chambered nautilus that I spent too much time on (for the film, of course).
This is probably the most faithful and accurate portrayal of an animal in one of my cartoons- real nautiluses already look pretty cartoony, so there was nothing much to change!

This was intended for a 2 second shot, but I put t...

Some fish

Most of the things in this film I'm making are quite cartoonish and silly (surprising I know), but it seemed very important to me that these fish passing by in the background were comparatively realistic. I haven't really questioned why until right now. Something to do with "fish dignity" I guess??? They aren't even a real fish species.

In the final shot they're going to be swimming behind a bunch of other stuff, so here's a nice empty gif they can have to themselves.

SPOP

Hello and welcome to December!

The Pen Pal ink drawings are all ready to be shipped off on Monday, and this is a coloured-in version of one of them. I usually give the picture a title or a description in this post but I don't know what this is a drawing of. The filename is spop.psd, so we can assume that the image and the character are both called Spop, and I can confirm that the rest of their cropped-out body is made entirely of decorative orbs- but beyond that Spop is a mystery!
<...

Tumbling Donks

Boing! Donk delivery, come get yer donks!

Each of these pieces was animated by hand, which took a dumb amount of time.
This wasn't because of any sort of animation purism- I definitely would have done this as a physics simulation if I was experienced in that sort of thing, but I'm not, so if I tried that and it didn't work then I'd have wasted my time and would still have to do it this way anyway. Whereas a bouncing ball is one of the first things people typically learn to animate, ...

Springboat

Is this how cargo ships work? Doing, there's your stuff!

I had to illustrate this boat twice- not for a sympathetic reason like a computer crash or a corrupted file, but the much sillier reason of not saving my work once for several days, accidentally merging all my layers in Photoshop without realising and then using up all my undos shading the chain links.
But it's here now, and it's ready to violently fling some cargo at you. Next step: animating the cargo!

Snail Wearing a Shoe

Hello hello lovely friends! Thanks so much for all the support and hope you've had a lovely October! Here is a snail, wearing a shoe. Regrettably this is not concept art for my new fashion label, but the line-art for this snail IS one of the ink drawings being sent to Pen Pals, which will be shipped off in the next day or two.

Just an electrical socket

Hi! Just a cheeky little background for the film I'm working on, of an electrical socket.
This new project has 3D characters, but still has 2D backgrounds- so for the sake of cohesion I've tried to paint a background that doesn't have line art, which is pretty new for me. I don't think like a painter at all, the way they dig shapes out of colour and light, it's magic as far as I'm concerned. I just draw lines- I find a bit of the edge of something and feel my way around the outside, like t...

Pipe Dreams

Hello, here's a little animated background for the THING I'm working on. The background will be animated in the final thing also, but not quite like this, or with this audio- I just wanted to arrange the assets I'd made into a little standalone loop for you!

Direct link: https://vimeo.com/634956123/5e64d516e0

Customize Your Critter

Build your buddy! Make your mate! Encase your entity!

edit: seems to be something weird happening with the video embed on the mobile app, so here's a direct link----> https://vimeo.com/629564769/4f5ebe067c

Sleepy Buildings

Hello you cheeky fish! A big thanks to patrons old and new for your support this fine October.

For this month's Pen Pal drawings I decided to do some architecture studies around Melbourne! And by "around Melbourne" I mean around G©©g™ Street View because we're still in the world's longest lockdown- which might be why the buildings all look so sleepy!

It was nice brushing up on my building skills, and finding the little details that make Melbourne look the way it does (and wh...

3D test: robot dog!

Hello! Here is a dog!!!

Some dog context:
I posted that echidna on here earlier, and was planning on expanding that into it's own bigger project with some other related ideas. But, some of those other ideas involve knowing 3D animation- which I do not!

So, I've been teaching myself Blender! And that's mostly consisted of wading through a bunch of beginner tutorials, and while I've lea...

Echidna again but with blobs

I revisited that echidna from earlier, and something terrible now appears to be happening to it.

I think it's pretty clear now that all this echidna stuff is expanding into some sort of bigger project. The nature of the project is still vague- I have a bunch of ideas that seem conceptually and aesthetically connected, but I haven't actually sat down to gather my thoughts and work out how to put all t...

Rat Comic

Hello hello!!!! As I mentioned yesterday, this month's Pen Pal drawings, when put together, double as a comic!

I'm not sure how this mass image dump is going to display across Patreon's app, webpage and emails, and whether it'll be a pain to navigate through or not, so I'm also attaching a PDF version to this post if that's easier to read- and easier to save, if you'd like to!

This is the ...

Rat Passage

Hello all you fine people! You lovely lot!!! Thank you for being here, and reading this, and for all your incredible support.

It is now September, and there is a rat in a spooky underground passage.

The original line art for this illustration is one of the ink drawings being sent to Pen Pals this month- if you're one of those, then maybe this is the drawing you will get! Those will be sent out in the next couple of days.

Where is this rat going? Well, there's actually an ...

Echidna

These round little waddlers are the champions of my heart. I can't believe I haven't animated one before now (save for a near-static one in the background of Throat Notes).

The ripply effect traveling down its back would normally be standard fare for me- though usually when I build an effect like this, there's a degree of blind experimenting, and however it turns out I roll with it. In this ...

Unfurly Ferny

Hello! If you missed it, I put out my new little animation a week ago. What have I been doing since then? Why, animating a fern frond unfurling!
You could say I've spent an entire week animating one leaf. Or you could say I've spent a week animating 5,329 leaves. Both statements are true!

This isn't for anything specific. I just like ferns, and have often thought they'd probably be really annoying to...

NYLONS: BIG CRISPY HD DOWNLOAD

Hello! My little film NYLONS is now on YouTube, so you can freely share it with your friends, uncles, grandmothers, dogs, landlords, etc. But I also have a treat that is just for you!
Here, in my little Film Library for patrons, you can now download a ProRes copy of the film- which is the biggest, crispest version that exists. Watch it on a big TV, project it onto th...

NYLONS

Hello! I did a little cartoon. It's called Nylons, and it's about some cheeky nylon-based lifeforms. I hope you like it!!!!! It's very short, but it was a good opportunity to try out a bunch of new techniques!

I don't want to pick apart the concept too much because it's a little light fun piece, but I'll just say that it's daydreaming a cute ecosystem back into a synthetic environment.
It might also be worth mentioning that my parents were hot air balloonists before I was born, and ...

A spy and his inconspicuous animal companion

Hello everyone, and happy August! Here is a drawing of a spy and his inconspicuous animal companion. The line art for this drawing is one of the Pen Pal sketches from last month, all of which I'll shipping out in the next few days.

But what does he spy with his little eye??? If he's looking through MY window, then probably a NEW VIDEO!!!! My newest little animation is done, and will be out on here for $5 patrons and upwards a bit later today. Or possibly tomorrow, if for instance it's ...

Moving cloud background, step by step

Hi! Here is a floaty cloudy background from the most recent shot, at various stages of completion so you can see how it came together.

The second step here, labelled "ball nightmare" is a pretty drastic change from the first step, and that's because my MODULAR CLOUD SYSTEM is being reused from Throat Notes, so I already made all the balls (and I made a video for that at the time).
The only ...

Secret music: "burrow"

Hello! I did a music. It's not in any way related to the film that I'm making, it is just a music.

This is one of several little musical sketches that I've been very slowly tinkering with in my free time. And by free time, I mostly mean when we're watching a movie and it gets to a scary bit and Zoë pauses it and asks me to make a tea and then I'm waiting for the kettle to boil.
One of them actually ended up being finished, or at least finished enough, so you might as well listen to...

Waterfowl

Hello hello hello everyone! Thanks for your support once again, or for the first time! You rock!!!

For those wondering about my next film project: well over half of it is now finished, and the finished parts also include most of the difficult parts. It's also very very short, so I reckon it could be finished in the not too distant future!

Not at all related, but here's a clown watering a bird. The original line art for this picture is also one of this month's Pen Pal drawings, whi...

Balloon Breakdown

Hello! Here is a balloon moving around. It's not particularly clear what it's doing because I haven't animated the rest of the scene that it's interacting with, and the balloon still needs to do more stuff, in response to its surroundings which aren't there yet.

It's going to take a little bit longer to do all the other bits, but while the WHAT isn't very finished yet, I can still show you the HOW! Here's a lil step by step on what I did. Hopefully it makes some sort of sense to look a...

Something Under The Rainbow

Wakey wakey

Bottom Bunk

Hello hello hello and thank you to patrons old and new!!! Here is a drawing of a big comfy bed, and a monster under it who doesn't look quite as comfy. Maybe pass down one of those pillows, comfy jerk up there!

The original line art for this picture is one of last month's Pen Pal drawings, which I'll be sending out in the next few days.