The Monster of Rudard Pond

Lately I've been trying to flesh out the imaginary world of my ninja characters. In the biggest park in the city, there's a lake called Rudard Pond (they call it pond, but I'm pretty sure if it has an inlet and an outlet, it's a lake). Lurking in the "pond" is a lake monster known as Rudy. The civilians of Animalburg don't really know what the monster looks like, so they make cute little salamander and sea dragon-like figurines of him for souvenirs. The people never get a good look at their monster because Rudy only hunts at night. Turns out Rudy's nocturnal and reclusive nature is for everyone's own good.

The ninja of the city are perfectly aware of what the monster looks like. Their unnofficial list of rules has "don't feed the lake monster" as #12 on the list. In reality, Rudy is a ten foot tall cross between a salamander, a sea monster, and a mutated experiment. It has no teeth, and it's completely blind from injuries and cataracts on its eyes, but anything that floats in the waters of Rudard Pond after dark has a good chance of being eaten. The monster brings along a trail of pondweed stuck to useless extra limbs caused by pollution. The end of its tail is missing from when it tried to eat a ninja that strayed too close to shore.

I had way too much fun inventing this thing. Can you tell?

Animation is a Pain

I already mentioned something about singing puffballs in my last post. Meet Rodger, Omar, Yolanda, Gary, Celia, and Benny (listed from right to left). They are to be my first characters capable of vocalization. In their case singing. This is mostly a practice in lip-sync and reading waveforms, but also in patience. As of now, I have only the first 8 seconds done. That is only after sitting in front of a computer for approximately ten hours total with a graphics tablet in hand. Sure I haven't been animating all at once, but it's a lot of work. Especially for one person.

Animation takes tons of imagination. The ability to hear a character talk and see them move, even when all you're doing is drawing one frame after another, after another, after another....

Free Time

Two weeks vacation and my imagination's already running wild. I'm launching back into my favorite things: cartoons, animation, and hopefully some movies. But I also love creating bizarre photo collages. The one above is made from three photos. I think it needs something though. Hmm....

I also figured out how to make an animation using Pencil, iMovie, and Garage Band. It involves lip-synced characers and a 6 part sound track of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on comb kazoo. Hope it flies. If I does, I'm posting it.

Enjoy the two weeks vacation fellow Parkland people!

Onward and Upward

Last week of summer class. I can't even tell you the relief. Fall class starts on the 24th, and with it a whole new set of worries, but for two weeks I'll have my freedom. What do I plan to do? Maybe catch up with friends, see a movie or two, sew a bunny rabbit for my co-worker's baby, and write, and draw, and write some more. I think that's all I have time for actually.

So as for this blog... well it just so happens blogging is fun, even if no one is reading. But for the sake of those who are, I think I'll keep posting here, though I am so changing the title. How does "EY Productions" sound? Or, oh! I know! "Penguins With Jet Packs"!

Anywho. Onward and upward...