Peripherals.

Hey,

Quick update here - My good buddy Ramon Rodriguez has just released the 4th episodic installment of his Plate of Butter Series. He told me that this one was rushed and the actual planned episode is much more elaborate. Hopefully we'll see that extended content before too long. But don't count on it! LOL.

Anyway, check out the fourth episode of Plate of Butter here.

Also, it dropped on Newgrounds today, and you can view it here as well and be sure to cast your votes, children.

Ain't support fun?

Blogcasting! (Appeasement [Capitulo Dos])

Okay, so now that I'm back for another round of updating and it's only been a day, I'm actually pretty happy about that. However, the stuff I'm chitty-chatting about right now doesn't please me. Oh no it doesn't.

Basically, yesterday when I said that I wasn't going to upload any screenshots or anything for people to look at, I felt like I was coming off like a real dick. While it may be true that I am in fact a real dick, it doesn't mean I have to do that to people who might actually want a bit more substance from me and the work I'm doing in leading up to the release of Gun ep. 2.

So with that in mind, I ventured to create my first video blogcast. It was a pain in the ass to record and encode and sync, thanks to the shitty functionality of CamStudio. ugh. The first time I tried it, the frame rate on the video was like 4 fps. Just plain awful. So I finally figured out a way to do it well, and instead of bothering with uploading it to my own server, I just slapped it on my myspizzle so I could stream it here. Should take care of the red tape.

Anyway, this blogcast is about a short animated sequence I was working on last night, specifically a shot of water running into a drain. I'm no expert in animation, let alone in animating running water, so I totally winged it, and as I did, I went back and looked at it and got turned off by the result. It was bugging me all day so I decided to share it with you fine folks with a twofold purpose in mind - to get some opinions/ideas/advice (if anyone has something relevant to offer), and to provide some actual content for the Heretik Times.

We're gettin' straight up LIVE NEWS in this bitch!!

Hahaha. OK, so here it is. Check it and hit me back. You might want to full screen it, although I have NO IDEA what it might do to the blog page itself. Enjoy.

Gun Blogcast 1 - Running Water Woes

Appeasement Please

Yeah....

So I've received some complaints regarding the updating of my blog. Mostly from that pretentious asshole Ramon Rodriguez (who by the way makes some dandy art stuff). Saying that I should update more often and let people in on the more detailed parts of the creative process from day to day, or other day-to-other day.

Truth is, whilst I toil away at this episode, I don't feel like there's anything of substance to put out there for you people to read about. Unless I make some major stride, I keep my effing mouth shut. This is pretty much my practice in life as well.

So what's there to say? Well ok I can tell you a little more about whats happening at the moment...

I'm basically working on the fifth shot of the last scene... A very simple one, that most people will forget before they even realize they saw it. However, try to grasp the scope of just how painstaking it is to single-handedly animate something, let alone something the length and magnitude of episode 2 of "Gun", which will essentially be the length of a fully animated half-hour anime (I'm including time for advertisements), which roughly comes in somewhere between 20 and 24 minutes.

I estimated that this final scene would be about 6-8 minutes, roughly. Lets see... this is the fifth shot and I'm already about a good minute in. and here's the part that will simultaneously excite you and piss you off if you're a fan of this series - This last scene has WELL over 50 different shots in it. and I do mean WELL over. try closer to 100. Exciting because you can expect alot of content in this climax (ewww, that sounded oddly sexual.) Pisses you off because you realize soon after getting excited that this means that it will take a lot of work to get to the very end.

I'm not gonna upload a screen shot tonight. I thought about it, and honestly I have nothing of value to offer that's worth staring at. I might have uploaded some storyboards, but my fucking scanner is working about as well as Britney Spears' career these days.

Also, I'm not gonna keep working on this anymore tonight. It's 2AM and I am bizarrely exhausted, despite having slept a little later than expected. May be the fact that I have about a solid pound of cheeseburger in my gut right now, but I am sleepy as all hell. I've been laboring on this shit since I got home this evening and groovin' to some old Isley Brothers jams, which are fuckin dynamite shit. If you ain't up on soul, you're missing out on some great music.

But I digress... I know that there are like a handful of you who are still waiting on tenterhooks for this new episode. It will happen one way or another. If I didn't honestly plan on continuing this series, I wouldn't have bothered doing all this work over the past 21 months (OMFG has it been almost 2 years already??!!!??). Fear not. Just stick to my side, and I'll reward your patience with a shiny new episode coated in ooey gooey goodness (again, vaguely sexual and disgusting).

Just stay tuned, you know what I mean. I'm going to bed. My eyelids aren't listening to me anymore when I tell them to stay up.

Bon Nuit.

One Small Step For Man...

One giant leap for "Gun" fans.

I am very happy to report tonight in the wee hours (as I am often prone to do anyway) that I've finally reached the editing stages for the final scene of episode 2. I rejoice. I revel... and I wince because I know just how much work will go into this scene.

I figure since I'm so bad with updates, lemme give you a little rundown of what's been happening...

The last scene that I completed is actually a compiled scene composed of 3 mini-scenes, each with its own relevance to the plot of the episode. The first sequence took the longest, and its the one I last posted a screenshot from. The one with the fat dude, heheh. That sequence got the ball rolling though, and I finished the second one within about 2 weeks, and the third one really kicked into overdrive. I finished that one in 4 days.

As much as I'd absolutely love to take some rest, there's no way in hell I'm doing that. Not when I can finally see the light at the end of this tunnel of perpetual work, tedium, annoyance, and meticulousness. There's only more of that to come, but at least I know that with this... It will finally be time to rock your collective world with this bad boy.

Will it be the greatest thing ever? Probably not. Truth is, I don't give a shit. I just want those who support me and the series to enjoy it to the fullest, and to appreciate that the nearly two-year wait in production hasn't been me being lazy - this episode is a fucking monster. I've never worked so hard on any single creative project in my life before. So I hope the results show that I haven't wasted my time or the time of those who have actually been waiting to see the next episode.

Ok... so now that we've said that... I'm going to bed. Tomorrow, the last hurdle begins.

Fuck yes.

New Year, New Stuff.

Firstly, a belated happy 2008 to all.

OK. So it's early in the new year and things are already off to a fairly decent start. I had a job interview yesterday, which I thought actually went better than I had anticipated. Hopefully it works out well. I'll know in a few weeks.

What does this have to do with "Gun" or any of my other creative projects, you ask? Well, simple - new job = more money = better production resources = better shit. Simple as that, amigos.

Another recent development - Ramon Rodriguez is at it again with another illustrated piece, this time though it's a real gem for any of you lovable Gun fans out there. He's working on a piece featuring Kai from Gun, for which I personally provided some super-sexy modeling services. lol.

He's been detailing the progress on the artboycat.com blog, so please check that shit and comment comment comment, there, here and everyplace else in between. It's making my trigger finger itch so good.

and while you're at it, be sure to add the official Gun myspace page to your friends list if you're on myspace. Show the world that you too have an itchy trigger finger.

Also... all this talk about Gun, and no info on the actual episode itself... well... the final scene of this episode is about to begin its final production phase this week, so there is definitely a bright shiny light at the end of this tunnel. Now I'm gonna go sleep off the "cold-weather has returned" blues.

Toodles.