I finished the last episode from my News Radio DVD set, and then turned to watching Joss Whedon's Firefly. I never saw the show past those few episodes that aired before it was cancelled. But now that the big Serenity movie is coming out, I thought it was time to take a look.
Besides, I got the entire series on sale for a ridiculous $22.
And it's probably the best $22 I've ever spent on DVDs. A real pity that FOX decided to screw Joss (not to mention the fans) and cancel it, because everything about the show is brilliant... from the writing to the special effects. I wish they hadn't moved the film all the way to September.
And then I decided to play around with putting the set together for my tooncast (a Flash animation follows, but you probably have to be in a browser to see it?)...
Look! It's going to be in widescreen! I'm so totally HDTV-ready.
Of course, I need to finish the theme song and record the introduction before I can animate the opening of the show for real, but it was fun to goof around with it for a bit. I am particularly pleased with the multi-planing that goes on between the set and the photo of Seattle in the background. But the amazing thing is that the file is only a measly 120K. No audio or anything, but there's still a lot going on for such a small size. There's a logo now too...
There's probably not much else I can do until my new microphone, pre-amp, mixing board, and compressor arrives next week. I need audio before I can really get to work.
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You’re pretty amazing you know? 🙂
The animation looks cool 🙂 Works fine in my feed reader too.
And the movie is Labyrinth, one of my all time favourites 🙂
thats really cool – how long did that take you to do? (and in answer to your $ question. its only good for the bank of helsby and I thought I had deleted that post!)
That kicks ass, Dave!
I can’t wait to see the show in action.
I had already drawn the pieces previously, so it only took about 30-40 minutes to composite the shot in Toon Boom Studio. The hard part was figuring out how far apart to put the different element planes so you get that cool “multi-plane” effect that adds depth to the shot.
Of course, I spent about 4 hours before that learning how to use the program, but it was fairly easy to figure things out (despite the fact that I didn’t have a manual to go from… I’m using a beta version with no documentation!).
If anybody is interested in creating animations of their own, I highly recommend Toon Boom Studio. They have an “Express” version that’s just $149, and worth every penny (there’s even a free trial download available)…
http://www.toonboom.com/
Here is the one I found…
http://www.jakeludington.com/gadget_envy/20050313_upgrade_your_podcast_for_under_200.html
Jake seemed to have all the stuff that Matt recommended… but at a reasonable price. I spent $40 extra on a better mic though (a Behringer B1). For everything else, I purchased exactly what he recommended (after researching reviews on each piece).
I plan to post regular updates on my tooncasting progress, so I’ll be sure to review each piece on Blogography.