I've made a couple animation tests this semester that I don't mind showing to the public. They have both given me a lot of confidence in my ability to do traditional animation because I feel like digital tools can be a crutch sometimes. They allow for more mistakes to be made and fixed very quickly. These add up though and take up time. I think it's good to try something every now and then that you can't really playback after you draw every frame. Moving and scaling entire drawings with the flick of a hotkey can also be a crutch at times. I'm not saying they aren't useful tools, I just think it's nice to use pencil and paper every now and then - I'm loving it so far!

This first one is cut-out paper images I printed from Photoshop and stop motioned under a camera.

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This second one is a ball bounce test we had to do pencil drawn on paper (I added in splash effect afterwards).

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More to come later!

TLDR: My photo dump of the event (approx. 130 or so photos which is low for me for being there a whole week)

Game Developer's Conference was so rad. Hung with all the coolest indie developers...It's a tight community and everyone is so awesome...

Best of all, Closure won the Excellence in Audio Award at the Independent Games Festival. It's a huge honor doing the art and animation for this game and encourages all 3 of us (Tyler Glaiel, Jon Schubbe (me), and Chris Rhyne) to step up our game (no pun int.) if we're already winning awards this early in development.

You can read our IGF Gamasutra Interview here and read about the Nuovo Talk Session Tyler and I spoke at and that I was quoted from here (I think Tyler actually said the second quoted statement).

More to come later!

also derek admits his mega64 videos are lame but i gave him reassurance

game developer's conference 2010 next week.

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gonna be with Glaiel-Gamer showin off this game

Nogfish and I are still in the midst of planning a Baltimore Meetup. WE ARE STILL PLANNING but...The date we are shooting for is May 1st at the inner harbor in the afternoon some time. We will give out more info later when we settle on everything. Just save that date on your calendar for now!

Also, Glaiel and I just released our first official Closure teaser trailer. It's a bit too long but I think it does it's job for the time being. The game still has a ways to go but we are still working on it which is the most important part! You can see it here on Newgrounds or on Youtube in HD:

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School starts back up in about a week! Ahhh

My cousin, Mike, just released his Christmas/Winter contest submission, My Two Front What?. It is awesome go check it out!

Merry Christmas everyone, I got some juggling clubs and a Disney Animation book and pet FROGS

What did you get?

Now go spend all your money and gift cards!

I'm also working on an animation/film hybrid. It won't be that amazing or winter themed but it's my first one. Picture related

TLDR: Watch The Adventures of Prince Achmed below.

I haven't really 'finished' anything to show as of late because school projects are usually rushed. Except for final projects in which case they are not finished yet...

The 'sillhouette style' in a lot of art nowadays is becoming very popular. I feel that it is a bit overused to some extents, but it is a huge feat to create such unique and interesting compositions in a complete 2d plane using only outer edge details. So here are some films that German animator and director Lotte Reiniger has worked on or completed instead. If you've never heard of her, she was a very talented woman and the stopmotion and storytelling in her work are phenomenal for those days before Pinocchio, etc. of the 1940s. You can always read more about her on wikipedia. I am merely introducing you to her work.

There a ton of projects she has worked on. They ranged from simple stopmotion figures to Chinese puppetry style sillhouetted sets and characters. The special effects she used at the time were also very awesome. Her projects ranged from approximately the 1910s to the 1950s and 60s so they are all pretty old. Many are pretty hard to find on the internet because they have popular titles (German titles, translated to English) such as Dr. Dolittle, Carmen, and The Pursuit of Happiness.

Many of her films, like Disney, were inspired by old stories that people were familiar with, but told in unique and different ways.

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I love the animation of Jack skipping after he (spoiler:) gets the beans.

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another touching tale

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In this film, Der Rattenfänger von Hameln (The Pied Piper), she animated the wooden rats, as one of her first projects she worked on. She only did some animation and her significant style isn't really seen here, but the film is still very interesting. Sequential parts can be found in the related videos section to the right.

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This is an 'Art of' video, where they show you techniques and how Reiniger implemented her style into stopmotion animation.

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AND THE CREAM OF THE CROP: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed)
If the music, design, animation, and story (Based on One Thousand And One Nights) don't make you jizz in your pants, I don't know what would. This is by far Lotte's most famous work, created all the way back in 1926. Now unfortunately I couldn't find a full version but here's a snippet. You can easily find more clips on Youtube.

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It's good to be reminded that animation can exist in different mediums rather than just Flash Animation. However, many techniques can be learned by outside techniques and used in Flash (or any other media). I feel that Lotte was successful at telling a story even though parts of her films could be a bit abstract or strange which I value in animation. I'm not a huge fan of collage and seizure films that are 100% up to interpretation. But it's nice to see style.

If this post is successful I'll gladly make more like these.

Oh and I'm making a 3d film called Bubblehouse Boy. Actually It's just a render I did for a project. I may submit to the art portal eventually.

My cousin submitted a fairly overlooked cartoon for Halloween this past weekend called Pump and Kin. It's pretty funny so I think you should check it out!

Also Nogfish and I are still talking about a Baltimore meetup at the Inner Harbor in the Spring time, in which Newgrounds staff members/site members come and enjoy a delightful trot around the area. So stay on your toes!

I'll post more Closure news next time I post (may be a bit longer than a week) because I'm still catching up with school work.

Hope you had a nice Halloween, can't wait for Thanksgiving!

I am still alive. I have not disappeared yet. Though, I just finished a whole slew of Closure art up for the Independent Games Festival we submitted it to last night. I put in who-knows-how-many hours staying up till 7am on school nights to get stuff done and looking amazing. This is definitely the most ambitious project I have ever taken on and we're not even close to finishing. Glaiel-Gamer and I made ~20 demo levels to show off to the IGF Judges (Same thing we did for PAX but very updated and much closer to what we wanted originally), so I think sometime in January they announce the finalists. Wish us luck!

BTW - Become a fan of Closure on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/page s/Closure/153376509869?ref=ts

If you want to enter any of your games in, it's 100$ (shouldn't be TOO much if you get the game sponsored beforehand for a fair amount of cash). The least you can walk away with is a long list of judge feedback. And the most is a 20k grandprize and exposure either way. The deadline is Nov. 1.
Also, there's a student competition as well. They have like 10 $500 prizes plus a $2500 grand prize in that category - not sure what the entry fee is for this one but I don't believe it to be $100. Deadline for that one is Nov. 15 I think.

We are planning on releasing an IGF demo trailer sometime soon but we are both very far behind in school work so we need to catch up. More Closure related news to come soon (Maybe t-shirts!?).

Speaking of college, still pretty disappointed with the almost all digital art program they have going. I'm making the most of it though. Maybe I'll continue at art school after i graduate from this one. (Can never stop learning!)

So yeah, gotta get back to school work now.

angryyyyfaaaaaic

TLDR: Here is my usual photo dump of the IndieCade trip
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IndieCade was this past weekend in Culver City, CA and I'd say it was a very successful event. It was located in a few different art galleries, with indie game finalists (Closure, Aether, etc) displayed mostly on PC's. Some of them were a bit too artsy for me so I think I'll have to agree with Luis and say that you should definitely use any type of ad or sponsorship money you get from your game to put towards entering it into competitions/festivals. It will get you a lot more exposure.

The awards show was a lot more fancy than I expected, located in Sony Pictures' building. Glaiel-Gamer and I won the Gameplay Innovation award which is very promising for the future of the development of the game!

Basically we all hung out in LA the whole weekend, which is a good break from boring college.

Glaiel, Luis, Bomtoons, and Rog (I-Mockery) are all cool people. Can't wait to hang out with them again at some point.
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Art Portal seems like it's developing really well and growing with awesome artists. There are some truly amazing artists on here that have motivated me to go back to the basics of art in general. My classes at school are pretty disappointing in what I've really learned thus far (it's not really an art school), so I'm trying to budget time around classes and digital game art to learn more on my own.

Conceptart.org forums are VERY useful in learning basic and advanced concepts, with both free and premium tutorials and 'online classes', etc. I can't believe I didn't come across them sooner, and I'm just getting used to where everything is, but it is a very good reference to see a large amount of professional sketchbooks and fine art in one place. Some of the threads date way back to 2000, still being posted in, but it's still cool to see all the steps and processes some of them take to get their ideas down in paintings.

A lot of the pieces are generic 'concept art landscapes, people, portraits, still lifes, sci-fi buildings, etc' but there is still a good amount of anatomy and color theory involved, which is what I'm trying to better myself in.

It'd be cool to see more of the amazing artists on here doing more 'step by step' or even more conceptualized tutorials of their processes and super secret techniques here in the Newgrounds Art Forums.

PS. thanks tom for the rigatoni and french toast

all the pax photos (160 something plus a video of a large man falling off the darksiders horse in like 10 seconds) i took here on photobucket

So yea I stayed at glaiel's apartment to go to pax with him and got sick too. the plane rides home sucked. But the weekend was pretty crazy. Had to walk 2 miles to his place after getting off the bus then stay up really really late every night doing random stuff like working on finishing the demo, fixing bugs, and playing games with he, derek yu (tigsource), and andy hull (storyfort). one night we went to a grill with all the pax10 and indie developers we saw there that day and played pool, too. glaiel and i crushed derek and andy.

the pax 10 booth went really well too, especially at Closure's kiosk. someone was always playing and someone else was always watching which is a huge difference from showing the flash game off at E3, where the big named developers couldn't care less about the indiecade booth (see Example 1: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_
index.php?story=25158). g4 people stopped by to play and hopefully there will be coverage on that in the next few days. we got awesome positive feedback. unfortunately some feedback was too positive and didn't offer anything constructive but it was awesome nonetheless! (thanks to everyone who wrote something!)

we were basically there and at the behemoth booth right next door the entire weekend. not really time to walk around, afraid of missing any sort of media or cameras coming around. glaiel, tom and i walked over to scribblenauts to try to see it and play it a few times but that's about it for me. the sumo sacs were indeed helpful resting tools but i could have used a regular chair at times.

besides all the indie developers i met, i also met a couple people i have known online for awhile: monkokio and thejermz. monkokio actually gave us a ride home the last day and woke up extremely early to give me a ride to the airport this morning which was nice of him.

and I met other newgrounders as well: mexifry, faux, fluffkomix, and morichax (and dan paladin, didn't talk to him that much though as he looked very busy drawing for people). nathan was there filming for his NG documentary and he was nice enough to get some footage of Closure. he's also a really cool guy i talked to for quite a bit.

everyone i met that day was really really cool so no newgrounds drama ensued

it was all just so awesome, i'd say it was better than E3 from the amount that was going on; and the fact that at PAX, people come to play new games, not just watch new trailers and do executive and corporate business.

thanks tom for all the merchandise i bought from the behemoth booth too!

ps. i think writing this thing was way more than i had to do in the first place so i didn't link to anyone's names

pss. fan art to me of my first game ever from derek: