New artwork…
After having drawn a bunch of backgrounds for the movie, I decided I like the fully-drawn backgrounds much better than the ‘cartoonized photographs’ ones. So I’m changing things around, and just about all of the backgrounds are going to be fully drawn.
Here’s an example of old-art vs. new-art.
Here’s Edward’s house from the original Spatula Madness short:
http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/edwardshouseold.jpg
And here’s the new Edward’s house:
http://www.spatulamadness.com/blog/images/edwardshouse.jpg
I think the new art fits the “flat” style of Spatula Madness much better, and gives a much better contrast with the character art.
Lots of questions, here are some answers (the ones I haven’t answered already in the comments section):
- I use an ‘M-Audio FireWire Solo’ box to connect my XLR microphone to my computer. It converts the XLR signal to FireWire. It’s always better to have an audio card with a direct input, but this works very well as an alternative.
- As for drawing tips, I’m the wrong person to ask, I can’t draw worth crap. The best way to get good at drawing is to just practice, a lot. I have a notepad and I sketch stuff whenever I can. I don’t have any “natural” drawing skills and so I have to just try a lot before anything good comes out. As for Illustrator, here’s some good tutorials that will get you more familiar with the tools:
http://www.sketchpad.net/illustrator.htm
I do prefer Photoshop (for detailed texture drawings) and Flash (for cartoony) drawing though, they just seem easier to me. Illustrator has some great tools built in though, so it’s really up to what works for you.
- There will be a trailer when I’m mostly done with the animation. It won’t be for a while, but there will indeed be a trailer in the future.
- Dustin, Apple.com has a disscusion forum in their support area that should give you some good help if you’re having problems with your Mac. There’s a million things that could possibly be wrong, I’m not really sure what advice to give without knowing specifics.
- The movie is being done at 29.97 fps or whatever NTSC is, although all the character animation is 15 fps to give that “cut out movement” look.
- I’m not sure if the original short is going to be on the DVD, it depends on if there’s enough room. If there’s room, it will be on, it’ll all depend on how big (file size) the feature is, as I’m going to be encoding it with a high bit-rate for optimum quality.
- I’ll have some more in-progress screen shots for you guys as time goes on.
- With After Effects I’m animating the movie “frame by frame” using something called Hold keyframes. Basically, I go a frame at a time and move the character, much like you would stop-motion. With Hold keyframes, every frame I touch has a keyframe set, and it won’t “tween” in between keyframes. I’m totally staying away from tweening for this, even in sections where it looks like tweening would have been easier.
August 15th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Wow, the difference between Edward’s 2 houses is pretty amazing. His new one looks a lot sharper. And it seems to fit his character a little bit more.
I can’t wait for knox to post the new knoxkast! It gives me a chance to escape from practicing lines…
Anyways, keep up the good work, everything seems so awesomely awesome!
August 15th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
Cool, first to comment
August 15th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
cool, jason!
love the new house
August 15th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
The new house is much sharper, though personally I preferred the old one. The “art-over-photo” look was very original and I thought it totally fit the style of the movie. (Not a live-action movie, yet not quite a cartoon.) That’s just my opinion; it’s your movie to animate your way.
Bob Shwendon: Jason asked us not to celebrate getting the first comment, but congratulations anyway!
August 15th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I like the house, except the old one looks more realistic.
Anyway’s, KEEP UP THE WORK JASON!
August 15th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
WOOT! first comment!
anyways, that’s not TOO suprising. you always do everything you can to step up the quality of your work, and it really shows. You either have extreme dedication to providing quality entertainment or OCD. keep up the good work, and post any pictures/ production crap you like: it’ll be warmly accepted by fans like myself
anyways, still got my fingers crossed that you don’t need to use a CREDIT CARD to buy “Spatula Madness” (credit cards are EVIL! i mean, come on, “here, we’ll lend you $500, you just have to give us $600 in 4 years” what’s up with that?)
August 15th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Kore22 - the only one looks more realistic because it -was- real
The problem arises when I do scenes that I can’t take pictures of - I have to draw those anyway. And mixing of totally different art styles for the backgrounds just ends up looking awkward.
When you see the spatulas moving around in the new art, it makes a lot more sense why I changed things, as the contrast between spatula art and background art looks pretty snazzy.
August 15th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
hey, i love the difference in the houses. In the new one, i love the shadowy effect for the house. keep up the good work man.
August 15th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Hey Jason lol its your buddy chiz, ty for waiting to answer my questions ok i understand you dont do a whole lot of drawing really you just take real photos and tweek them to make them more graphicy to make look cartoony well i wanan do that like a ipod to a cartoonish ipod for my movies. Anyway ty alot jason, can u tell me where you learned to use all thees programs and theses trategys to make this like if there books can u tell me so ill buy them . Also who is going to be making the dvds and giving them to u to sell to people? id like to know so i can add them to ym list
August 15th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Well for my new art it is all hand drawn. My old photo art was what you’re talking about - photos I took that I traced over. When I would get lazy I’d ‘posterize’ it and let the program do most of the work, or use the cut-out filter in Photoshop.
I didn’t really read any books to learn these programs, I just kept using them until I figured them out. I started making movies on the computer back in 1999 and have only recently started getting anywhere near good at them.
The DVDs are being professionally produced by a replication company. http://www.discmakers.com
I’ve answered all these questions before, search the blog
August 15th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Will a DVD cover be released anytime soon? Or will we not get to it it until the DVD is complete?
August 16th, 2006 at 1:23 am
lol sorry jason i came a bit late in the blog couple more
:D what tools do u use to turn a normal person into a cartoon ? and if there all hand drawn does that mean hand drawn from scartch on illustrator or litterally on paper in real life then scanned on computer. lol ty
August 16th, 2006 at 2:11 am
That new art looks great. How long does it take you to draw that kind of thing?
The grass looks good!
August 16th, 2006 at 5:52 am
Personally, I don’t want to know everything about the movie before I see it. I did that with Klay World: Off The Table and it wasn’t worth it.
So yeah, keep up the good work, Jasy boy, but don’t give away too much.
August 16th, 2006 at 8:04 am
will you have an audio commentary on the dvd and/ or other special features?
August 16th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Hi there Jason, I’ve been a fan of both you and Knox for a long time but this is my first time trying to post. Anyway, Spatula Madness looks like it will be a great movie, and I’m looking forward to seeing it. About the update, I think the new house does fit the style better. Okay, that’s all I have to say for now.
-ArenaMaster
August 16th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
I agree with Jared (YAY Ingus!) with the DVD cover thing. I want to see one!
August 17th, 2006 at 4:31 am
What program did u use to make battle for Newgrounds portal?
August 17th, 2006 at 11:19 am
Waitaminute…. Jared Johnson…. Ingus…. OMG!! I always thought you were just a random SM fan. It never occured to me that you had the same name as the genius who created Ingus! After I saw frostbite’s comment it clicked! I love the Ingus movies, Mr. Johnson. Now my cousin and I always yell “Shizzle!” at eachother.
(Sorry for this ridiculously long post that had nothing to do with spatulas. Uh…down with spoons!)
August 17th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Sweet! FrostBiteStudios and FriedBread know me! I didn’t know I had any fans! That’s awesome!
August 17th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
i never saw knoxkast episode 11 on itunes….
August 17th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
I guess Tomhut hasn’t gotten it up yet.
The mp3 is online, but not the iTunes version apparently.
http://knoxskorner.com/kkrdirect/kkr11.mp3
August 17th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
i already heard it…. but i want the full vesion on my ipod
August 18th, 2006 at 1:26 am
Woot! Jared your awesome! I just saw my first ingus ep. today ( the one with knox ) on newgrounds then i realized: “hey….isnt that the guy from the production blog?…Holy crap it is! anyways…so…yeah, nice work.
August 18th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
In the original short, what was the name of the music that was playing from max’s head? and where can I get it.
August 18th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
I forget the exact name, it’s from royalty free collection, which I think was about a hundred dollars.
August 18th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Awesome Jason!
The house looks really cool. About this.. “Battle” thing on Newgrounds.. where can I watch it? Thanks.
Oh and by the way I’m on vacation so that’s why I haven’t been commenting much.
(Not that anyone cares.)
August 18th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Greg, its called battle for the portal
you can watch the full thing on filmcow if you look through the “old stuff” section, but you can also watch a flash version in 4 parts:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/128258
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/128448
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/128589
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/129593
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO sorry if that’s spamming, Jason! i dont think so, but just in case i apologize in advance
August 18th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Yeaahhh Battle for the Portal is a few years old. And pretty stupid, ha ha.
August 18th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
how long did Battle for the Portal take to make? it seems like it would have taken a LONG time…with all the 3d style and such…
August 18th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
The new style looks great, I loved the old but the new fits more with the style.
Also my Mac problem has been persisting now for 5 months, and steadily has gotten worse to the point where I cant even get it on. I’ve gone to numerous support sites and even had my uncle (He’s a big Mac guy) check it out, 3 times! Anyway this monday I’m going to a Mac users group to hopefully get this problem sorted out at last.
The Skit in Ep. 11 was awesome! It would have made a great movie as well, though finding a huge library with noone in it to shoot in might have been dificult.
August 19th, 2006 at 12:42 am
ehhhh i dunno i think i like the other one better it leaves a nice zing to it and lots of movie makers tend to think thats not ariginal for some reason but uses it
August 19th, 2006 at 2:04 am
was the old house urs?
August 19th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Hey Jason, that looks awesome, deffinatley more fitting to the character and sharper too, however, for the sake of continuity, will you explain the difference in Edwards residence in the film? And, on that note, will the original short be in any way connected to the film (sorry if this has been asked before, but, if it has, I have not seen the answer, haha)
August 19th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
i like the old house better the the new one.
August 20th, 2006 at 12:09 am
great job jason cant wait for the movie
August 20th, 2006 at 7:47 am
Jason you told me over pm before that you make your images look more cartoony by getting a image render >artistic >cut out but then wat cutout do you use to make them look cartoony and what are the settings set too.
Also awesome the new house looks so much better, the old one looked like there was sunlight in camera. IT owns btw my series is still under development of drawing stage + script—thanks jason
August 20th, 2006 at 10:43 am
jason u rule. How much material from the original movie will be in this movie? Will there be any jokes and lines from the original movie that are in this one?
August 20th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Chiz - That’s for some of my old art, I do that in addition to re-drawing with the lasso tool and tracing. It’s just ‘cut out’, there isn’t more than one. Mess with the settings until you get something you like.
Chris Spargo - it’s just the characters and a tiny bit of the plot (spoons basically.) There aren’t any lines from the original in the new movie (there is one that’s similar with the Crazy Homeless Guy, but still totally different.)
August 20th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
lol thank you for trying to explain it to me jason its just i dont get how u draw with the laso tool when thats uesd to cut things out and dont you trace with the pen tool that makes paths btw how can i show u some of the chracters i drew for my series i drew 3 i even drew the character i was hoping u would do since u said u would do tthe voice for a cahracter as long as not to many lines
August 20th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
To anyone asking about Battle for the Portal:
I used Bryce, Carrara, Poser, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro. I don’t recall how long it took me to make.
Chiz - I use the lasso tool to draw by clicking and creating basic shapes and then filling it in with a color or gradient. I then stretch textures of whatever over that.
August 24th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
geez so many people are asking u what programs you are using… pity