A look back at my second cartoon - part 1
By this time, (Still in 2003) I had messed around with the program Flash a bit more. I bought a few animation books, as well as ones that were geared specifically for creating cartoons in Flash.
Mind you, YouTube wasn't around yet so there weren't all the instructional videos available you can watch to learn how to do it these days.
Overview
Dexter and I were watching Huckleberry Hound re-runs on DVD and thought we would try something like that for the next cartoon. So we wrote this story and chopped it up in 3 parts.
Concept
The cartoon starts with Dexter in his "Secret Lab of Justice" below the local playground. Is he working on his new potion in the lab?
Nope. Just mixing some strawberry milk.
Now that you, the viewer, have joined him, he tells you the story of his latest adventure. It's about a disgruntled toy action figure that came to life and tried to take over the world.
Art
I drew and inked all of this by hand with a brush, like I did for the comic books. Then I scanned it into the computer and converted it to vector images. But from looking at it, I was still pretty green at cleaning up the art after scanning.
Animation
After the story was written I translated the entire thing into drawn scenes on storyboards. This was a lot more helpful when animating the cartoon. I wanted to work more on the drawn in-betweening animation and not relying in the program to do it, to understand more how it worked after it was "shot". So I penciled all of the movements on a light board instead of animating it in Flash.
Audio
After the script was written I recorded the voices on the computer with a video editing program. I did this so I could scan the storyboards into it and match them up to what was being said scene by scene. I used that scratch movie as a reference for the Flash animation.
Cartoon
Here is part 1 of the cartoon.
Action! It figures pt. 1 (2003)
Mind you, YouTube wasn't around yet so there weren't all the instructional videos available you can watch to learn how to do it these days.
Overview
Dexter and I were watching Huckleberry Hound re-runs on DVD and thought we would try something like that for the next cartoon. So we wrote this story and chopped it up in 3 parts.
Concept
The cartoon starts with Dexter in his "Secret Lab of Justice" below the local playground. Is he working on his new potion in the lab?
 |
| Dexter working in his secret lab |
 |
| Strawberry milk. Mmm. Mmm. |
 |
| The now giant action figure walking through town |
I drew and inked all of this by hand with a brush, like I did for the comic books. Then I scanned it into the computer and converted it to vector images. But from looking at it, I was still pretty green at cleaning up the art after scanning.
 |
| Example: Scan of the Inked background for the entrance to the secret lab before converting it to vector |
After the story was written I translated the entire thing into drawn scenes on storyboards. This was a lot more helpful when animating the cartoon. I wanted to work more on the drawn in-betweening animation and not relying in the program to do it, to understand more how it worked after it was "shot". So I penciled all of the movements on a light board instead of animating it in Flash.
Audio
After the script was written I recorded the voices on the computer with a video editing program. I did this so I could scan the storyboards into it and match them up to what was being said scene by scene. I used that scratch movie as a reference for the Flash animation.
Cartoon
Here is part 1 of the cartoon.
Action! It figures pt. 1 (2003)
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