module 4, part 3.

Everyone had warned him. Everyone in the town said it wasn't worth it. Zeke never listened to everyone anyway. Now he had 2 extra legs, a tail, and was stuck up a creek without a paddle-or a working motor, nothing to say of the correct appendages to use it. What a day.....

The village is in a fortunate island, an island in the world that had no dead zones for magic, or technology on the mainland. Your phones would work, just as well as your thinkagrams. Not too many visitors from the outside world, they had to go through the reefs, and do it without tech or magic sails, because of all the shifting dead zones around the island. The satalight tv always made it through though, it was weird. But I digress.

Zeke was always the odd man out. no head for numbers, and no skill with spell weaving, he was always behind everyone else. What did he care.... He always dreamt of leaving the island, going somewhere else, where he could fit in. His family loved him, he had friends, but it just didn't feel right to him. He kept building a boat, took him years too, with every thing he could. Eve found an old clunker of an engine, and stuck a propeller on it.He even swiped an old map from the library, must been a hundred years old. He got a gps too, but that wouldn't always work out on the currents. Zeke dreamed of the day he would ride out to the first island he could find.

He finally finished it a few days ago, the boat he would sail away. He named it the escape, and loaded it with food, some gas, and a few batteries. He set out, leaving his home behind on the open sea. He even saw an albatross on his way out, which someone had told him was good luck, he wasn't sure who. Maybe he could kill it and make a good luck charm. He actually did manage to lure the thing down, with some food. It ended up choking on some gas, and he kept it around a few days... Thats when things got rough.

Zeke may have had a map, but he forgot to eve learn how to read one. His gps keep ending up not working because there were too many clouds in the way. Whenever he was in a magic zone, storms would swirl around him, like he broke some taboo. He lost allot of his food, and equipment right then. During the worst night, he ended up in a magic zone, and it seemed like a lighting storm was simply hovering over his boat. As soon as Zeke realized this, 5 bots of lightning hit him simultaneously. When he woke up is was daylight again, ans he swished his tail, and sniffed the see air with his long nose......wait. Why was he a donkey?

In his unconsciousness, he had drifted into a tech null zone. Magic keeping him in his form was still working, and he was stuck with no motor, little food, and no way to use a paddle. What a sorry state he was in. Zeke had to trust to the currents, and the wind to get him to an island soon, and he had the strangest hankering for carrots....

module 4 part 2

So, time for part 2 of the animantics project. I decided to be a complete nerd and take my found images from a web comic, and my audio from a Joss Wheadon film called Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.The Film first: Dr. Horrible is a sort of internet phenomenon, created during the writers strike in not too distant memory. It is a musical told from the point of view of a super villain, Dr. Horrible, and how he wants to beat his nemesis, Captain Hammer, winning the affections of his love interest, Penny, and gain entrance to the evil league of evil, led by the infamous bad horse. The song, brand new day, is when horrible becomes try pissed, at the "good guy" captain hammer, and decides to sing about it. I don;t really want to spoil such a good movie, but you should watch it if you get a chance, especially since it;s only 45 minutes long. It's on hulu, here: http://www.hulu.com/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog

Dominic Degan, Oracle For Hire, is a web comic that has been running since 2002, and whose update schedule has never dipped below 4 updates a week, and for the bulk of it;s existence, updated 5 or 6 times a week. It has a whole host of characters, with the main protagonist Dominic, being a seer, who has lots of abilities dealing with seeing the past, future, and present. His "rouge's gallery", if it can be called that, includes baddies like his brother, the necromancer, TIM (fan named), The Inferno Mancer, who channels the power of the lord of hell, and arguably his arch nemesis, Clesto Morgan, the one-time champion of Chaos and Darkness during the storm of souls. For the purpose of this animatic, I decided to switch perspectives a bit, making Celesto our Dr. Horrible stand in, Luna-Domonic's love interest, as well as an extremely competent elemental caster- penny, and Dominic himself as Captain Hammer.

Now, this didn't transfer over perfectly. I realized when watching the finished project that my timing is off in 2 or 3 places, but windows movie maker seems to be unable to let me fix the problem. Also, I didn't have a comic ready for Celesto and Dominic for ever occasion, so I improvised a little, bringing back TIM for a few shots, and making him our pseudo bad horse. If you have allot of free time, and haven't read DD, I also highly recommend picking it up. With a few thousand strips, though, it may take you a while to finish reading. http://www.dominic-deegan.com/

Module 4 part 1

This is my animatic project, a little late, because of time crunch issues, and the fact that I was running out of sleep recently, but here it is.

For my audio clip, I chose a 1:05 bit by one of my favorite stand up comics, Brian Regan. He talks about Evil Kenevil a bit, and remarks on how he figures evil is doing today, and how he thinks when he's being interviewed. The video more or less speaks for itself.

I ended up doing this whole video in MS paint, for a few reasons. The biggest one is that I'm tired of finishing all my work on paper, then having trouble scanning it in, having to touch it up, orient it, and have gobs of the quality ruined. I actually wanted to see how much detail I could get into a bunch of images created with the program as well. It's certainly not the best looking thing ever made, but it cam e out a bit better than I imagined. I also was able to sneak some trick in. I never had to draw a face, and evil was always in a helmet. I used a "bounce counter" to help keep flashback time. Also, to save image creation time, I was able to use the ancient and venerable technique of stock footage. :P