Tornado Terry's offers an "all-you-can-play" arcade gaming model. For $12.50, you get unlimited play on any of their games. Needless to say, this drastically alters the way most of the games there are played. With the exception of a few older classics, most games give you unlimited continues without losing points so there's no need for concern about your HP. It does sap the fun out of it rather easily, but it also allows you to complete those more challenging games you were never able to because you're not made of tokens.

I got the high scores on The Simpsons Arcade Game, Pac Man and Frogger pretty easily, which tells me the all-you-can-play model really does take away most of the incentive for striving, so the most interesting thing that happened was the glitch I encountered playing Revolution X, that Aerosmith game where you shoot CDs at people and helicopters and stuff.

So there I was in the chemical plant in the Amazon jungle. A bunch of hazmat guys were shooting at me, and I was shooting back. Then more and more hazmat guys appeared and were shooting at me. This is odd, I thought. Can they really expect me to take out this many enemies? But I kept shooting, I probably died at least once but kept going, more kept appearing faster than I could kill them off, following me as the camera moved around on-rails. The screen seemed to gradually get blurrier as hundreds and hundreds of hazmat guys appeared and shot at me. Eventually it got laggy from the excess of hazmats, and after a few more seconds the screen went all Missingno. on me before going to a RAM dump screen.

I'm not sure what happened, but it kind of felt more like an accomplishment than beating The Simpsons.

I just wanted to record that this event happened and I couldn't make it short enough to fit on Twitter. So what interesting arcade game glitches have you guys encountered? The only other one I can remember, aside from light guns not working, is when the Windows start menu somehow came up on a roller coaster ride game at Main Event. I opened up Internet Explorer but it wasn't connected to the web.

OH GOD DAN HARMON WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DO THIS TO YOU I THOUGHT A DAY OF ARCADE GAMES WOULD EASE THE PAIN BUT IT DIDN'T

The due time for entries in the Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation's open round has passed already. Entries can still be submitted for another few hours but with a heavy point penalty. As my entry is currently rendering, I'll use this time to explain what happened.

About a day after the theme, "discovering time travel", was announced, I came up with an idea I liked and wrote a script over the next couple of days. I did some rough animation. I initially liked the project, but eventually got to the point where I just didn't have any enthusiasm for it at all. Factors leading to this included realizing while I was animating that a couple of stories with similar premises already existed (which wouldn't have been so much a problem, but the premise was really the main thing this had going for it), a lack of an ending (I love an anticlimax as much as the next guy, but the ending I had was a flagrant cop out), and a suspicion that, if I were to watch this as something someone else made, I would overall consider it a wasted opportunity more than anything. My initial plan was to just make sure it existed so I'd have something, anything to submit to NATA, but then I came up with an idea I liked a lot better. By the time I finished the new script, more than half the time before the deadline was gone.

As a result, I had to make compromises all through the process of making the animation. For example, I was extremely opposed to voicing the protagonist myself, but I couldn't find anyone whose voice I felt fit and eventually there was too little time to try. For another example, I drew a lot of rough animation that never made it in because I didn't have time to do the cleanup animation. The biggest example is that about an hour before the deadline I just relented and acknowledged that there's no way I'd have time to finish the animation, so the video is about 75% nothing but static.

Fortunately, the story seems to work pretty well as an audio drama. Possibly better as an audio drama overall.

It's possible the render won't finish until it's too late. In fact, I fully expect my computer to just freeze and not even finish. But... well, I have an audio drama completed, at any rate.

The title of the piece is "Once More, Once More". It's pretty different from anything else I've done. Hopefully it's rather unique as a work of fiction. Also, hopefully it's good. I think it has a strong premise but the execution is so far removed from what I'd intended that I have no idea how much of the core remains.

UPDATE: Still rendering. I'm going to sleep.

Thank you to everyone who's wished me a happy birthday so far (and undoubtedly will continue to do so).

A special thank you to for drawing a picture. Why don't the rest of you draw pictures? Lousy cheapskates.

But I want to give a super special thank you to for giving me the best birthday card I've ever received. I'm sure she won't mind if I scan it in and share it with everyone:



Browse 's art gallery if you're so inclined; she has a very distinctive and appealing drawing style. Also, many of her thumbnail images are misleading, which is always a plus.

Why doesn't John Connor travel back in time a couple of minutes so there are two of him, then the both of them could travel back in time a couple of minutes so there are four, and so on? John Connor could even send a few John Connors back in time to protect Sarah Connor and John Connor (both of whom, at least in Sarah Connor Chronicles canon, could also duplicate themselves a few times). That way even if the Terminators manage to kill one or most John Connors, there are still more than enough John Connors to lead the resistance.

I'm sort of surprised it took me this long to think of this. I can't be the first person this idea has occurred to; has the idea ever been explored seriously, e.g. in fanfiction or James Cameron Q&A?

I'm really torn about entering the Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation. On the one hand, it doesn't end until October, meaning if I last until the end the chances of finishing the Enthalpy pilot this year drop by about 80%. On the other hand, if I last until the end I'll both significantly raise my profile as an animator and bring a bunch of animated stories into existence during a period that I otherwise would probably release nothing but possibly the Enthalpy pilot.

So I've decided on a compromise: I'll participate in the open round and round one, during which point I will scout for talented volunteers to illustrate stories for Enthalpy comics so I can continue to provide updates to the website. If I haven't found anyone during that time, I will drop from the tournament during round two-- unless during round two I'm up against a really high profile animator whom I'd be really enthusiastic about competing against. That's assuming I even make it to round two.

I think NATA will aid my productivity tremendously by forcing me to work within a slim time constraint and still produce the best work possible within these limits. If I think a work can be better I'll usually hold off on it until I'm able to produce it at its best-- in this case, the goal isn't to make the best works under any possible circumstances, but simply to make works better than my competitors can under similar conditions. I'll know, under these circumstances, at least, the true extent of my abilities. My entry for the open round, which I will say nothing about currently, is definitely not perfect, but by making it I'll know the true extent of what it's possible for me to make at this point in my life under these limitations. That's exciting for me.

Knowing me, it's entirely possible I won't even complete my first entry. That that seems pretty inconceivable to me at this point shouldn't matter given my track record of abandonment. But, really, if this does manage to be the kick in the pants I need to actually make a bunch of stuff in a short amount of time, wouldn't that be great?

P.S. I'm really excited about NG's new video player. Now I don't have to worry about filesize constraints or processing slowdowns! I'm free to go crazy with lighting effects and glows and blurs!

The Cabin in the Woods is my favorite movie of the year so far. Unless you count Arrietty as a movie of this year, which definitely complicates things.

I don't want to be one of the insanely rabid Whedon fans who just turns people away through grotesquely stratospheric zeal, but films of this sort rely entirely on word of mouth to get decent box office returns, so I'm kind of obligated to get a little insanely rabid just this once.

The movie is hilarious and exciting and full of surprises and thoughtfully deconstructive without shoving metafiction in your face at the expense of substance. It's best to know as little as possible about the movie before you see it; I'll just say that it unravels the horror genre so thoroughly that I feel true pity for the generic horror movie whose trailer was shown before Cabin because it's impossible to think of it now and not laugh. Then again, I think I was laughing at the trailer before I saw Cabin anyway.

If you like B-movies, you'll probably love this. If you hate B-movies, you'll probably like this. If you like deconstructions that mercilessly subvert tropes while simultaneously reveling in them, well, here's your movie. If you're bothered by gore, you may want to stay away, though it never gets "torture porn"y like, say, the Saw or Hostel movies.

P.S. I'm really tempted to enter the Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animators this year even though it'll mean another enormous chunk removed from my schedule. Maybe I'll lose early on and not have to worry about it.

I don't think saying anything in regards to The Hunger Games and Battle Royale would make any difference at this point.

But I have something to say that I think is more important than whether or not The Hunger Games copied its idea from Battle Royale. The important thing to consider, in my opinion, is that antagonism between Hunger Games fans and Battle Royale fans is not only unnecessary, but harmful.

Most of the conversation I've seen regarding the two is either "The Hunger Games is a Battle Royale ripoff," or "I wish those people saying The Hunger Games is plagiarized would lay off already," with a few arguments that both are ripoffs of The Running Man and/or Lord of the Flies sprinkled in. Since, at least in the English speaking sphere, The Hunger Games is much more well known than Battle Royale, it's understandable that people will want to defend the underdog (Everyone likes an underdog, right? No?), but it's also important to note that the emotional reaction from Hunger Games fans seems to overwhelmingly be that the Battle Royale fans are annoying and, consequently, to many people Battle Royale carries a negative connotation as "that thing people won't stop saying my favorite book ripped off". This doesn't accomplish anything but create backlash. The unintended result is that Battle Royale is not its own thing to consider on its own merits, but a thing that exists in relation to The Hunger Games and that, if consumed, is done with the purpose of comparing it... often in an "us vs. them" scenario, in which Battle Royale is the "them".

I'm glad that Battle Royale is finally getting increased recognition and an official US release. I just hope that it can still be seen as Battle Royale and not as "that thing that's like The Hunger Games"/"that thing The Hunger Games is like". And, by and large, that doesn't seem to be the current situation.

Fans of Battle Royale, recommend it all you want, but it's not helpful to claim The Hunger Games is a ripoff. And if you feel you have to, try not to seem angry about it. It makes you seem like the villain.

Fans of The Hunger Games, if you're sick of people bringing up Battle Royale all the time, try not to hold it against Battle Royale. It's not the one that's annoying you.

Fans of both... um... enjoy the teen-on-teen slaughter, I guess. You monsters.

If you've read my reeeally old journal entries, you may remember the few times I recommend works of entertainment/art that I enjoyed.

I stopped doing that upon realizing the ease with which my feelings toward any given work of fiction are wont to change, after which interest in my opinions declined just enough that they were no longer rewarding to write about.

But today I'm going to recommend something that probably isn't considered obscure as far as its ilk goes, as it is in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, but since there are so many science fiction short stories in existence it may have slipped through a few cracks that should be sealed up. If you've read it already, that's super. If you don't like reading, that's fine too I guess, but I'm not sure what you think you're currently doing.

OK, so the story is The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. It portrays a future in which the world is the same all over and humans hardly ever leave their rooms, only viewing things or communicating through a Machine. The story chronicles two separate troubles: first of a man who ventures outside to Earth's abandoned surface, and second of the panic and terror that ensues when the Machine breaks down.

Written today, the story would be seen as an obvious allegory for the internet and social networking as a replacement for real interaction. Here's a quote from near the beginning of the story:

"In the air-ship-----" He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people - an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. [...] Something "good enough" had long since been accepted by our race.

I assumed while reading the story that it was rather old due to the complete lack of contractions, but was quite surprised when I subsequently looked the story up and discovered that its initial publication was in 1909. Forget internet or even television; radio broadcast hadn't even caught on yet.

The Machine Stops is, of course, in the public domain--- at least, it is in countries where copyright legislation isn't completely insane. So you can read it for free from various websites, such as here or as a PDF here. Thank goodness we don't have to actually get up and visit libraries anymore.

And what better way to celebrate Ash Wednesday than by watching a newly surfaced recording of Pokémon Live!, the Broadway stage musical? Sure, the video quality's a bit murky, but do you really want to see a twenty-something-year-old Ash dancing in his underwear in higher quality? (Don't answer that.)

There's also a much higher quality Making Of video.

Did you know Pokémon Live! is the only Pokémon related visual presentation to get mostly positive critical reviews in the US? It turns out what Pokémon needed all along was more strobe lights.

There's a code at the bottom of one of the pages in the Adventure Time comic that came out recently. Yes, I just solved it. I did a Bing search for the result and didn't find any hits. Hooray! I'm the first to solve it! Then I did a Google search and discovered someone on 4chan already solved it three days ago. So this journal entry is just to record in whatever search results it'll show up in (especially once the 4chan posts are gone) that I'm apparently the second person to solve the cryptogram.

The obvious way to start was to note that there are two red dots at the end of the code and assume the writer was Marceline, then notice that the text after the hyphen fits with the word "MARCELINE". I didn't do that.

I started by doing a frequency analysis. After judging that there were no spaces in the text because the words would be way too long, I assumed that the most commonly used symbol would translate to the most commonly used letter, E. Then I looked at the text after the hyphen and tried to think of any relevant names that were that length and had the letter E in those positions. I came to Marceline by process of elimination.

The rest was just guesswork based on frequency but I only messed up twice. The message is "HEY GUYS I PROMISE ILL SHOW UP MORE NEXT ISSUE - MARCELINE". Almost an anticlimax, since I was hoping because of the message's difficulty it'd be something really special. But since I solved it the hard way instead of the "Oh, those are Marceline's teeth marks" way, I guess it wasn't supposed to be quite that difficult.

Still, it was a fun challenge. I like cryptograms. Keep them coming, Ryan. But for the love of God make sure E is always the most common letter.

The ending of last night's Adventure Time was directly influenced by YouTube Poop. Kinda makes me ashamed to ever concern myself with copyright.

Yeah, there was already that iCarly episode that had sentence mixing as a major plot point, but this... this is special.

This entry exists only so the previous entry about needing to cast Hazard no longer shows up front. Hazard has been cast.

The rest of the entry will consist of quality frame grabs I took from Super Mario World.

You know that small collection of screenshots I posted from a short '50s-style cartoon I'm almost finished with? I'd love to go from almost finished to turbo-finished, or at least mega-finished, but nobody responded to my casting call for Hazard. That's what happens when you open your post with "Oh hey I haven't finished the last thing I cast yet but here's something else with barely any animation."

So, uh... Hazard is... well, she appears on this page in the Halloween comic, and she appears briefly in the Enthalpy opening theme, and... that's all she's been in so far. And I may end up removing her from my next cartoon due to lack of interest.


Seen above: Not interesting.

Feel free to audition if you think you can act, would be a good voice fit, and can deliver good sound quality. But only if you'd be interested in continuing to voice Hazard throughout her sporadic appearances in Enthalpy. See the "casting call" link in the first paragraph for details. Or here. I can link twice.

While waiting for auditions to not come in, I changed some of the backgrounds a bit to fit the Colonel Bleep style more. I'm leaving the deviation up because I always find unused versions of things interesting (yay beta versions!), but here's the update version of that here.


P.S. Apparently "C is for Cookie" is more than twice as popular as any other Sesame Street song. Interesting. My personal favorite's "Put Down the Duckie", but "C is for Cookie" is great too.

...About the World It Inhabits.

The SNICKERS commercial with the sharks being focus tested.

Normally, even really amusing commercials get grating after I see them a few times, but this one hasn't gotten old yet. And, unlike any other commercial I've ever seen, it makes me curious about the circumstances surrounding the events portrayed therein.

Not so much due to the existence of talking, air-breathing sharks. That I can take as a given. The fascinating element is the brutality. Not only is a company (Mars, Inc.?) feeding live people to sharks for the sake of focus testing, but the human executive in the commercial is a complete psychopath who thinks nothing of murdering people for the sake of the product. Presumably, shortly after the commercial ends, the sharks eat the next guy alive as the executive watches cheerfully. Why don't the sharks eat her? Obviously, it's because she's providing them with food. Once the test ends and she tells the sharks to leave, I wouldn't consider her chances of survival too great. But I'm sure Mars, Inc. considers her, like all its employees, expendable.

Is Mars, Inc. operating its tests secretly, or does the commercial take place in a world where all humans lack empathy and tests of this sort are commonplace? Or is The Company not Mars, Inc. at all, but another company that has made a deal with them to buy their candy for the sake of feeding it to people who will then be fed to sharks? Are sharks the dominant race, and do they demand routine human sacrifices? Or does The Company simply want to earn more money by expanding its product line to a new species, even at the cost of countless human lives?

Whatever the circumstances, the alternate reality glimpsed in this commercial is a grim one indeed. A world in which mankind is so beyond redemption that perhaps the fate of becoming shark bait is not unwarranted. It's the human species that's the real focus tested man-eating shark.

Any attempt at exact categorization of a fluid concept is doomed from the start. Linnaean taxonomy is a complete mess and TV Tropes is the most frustrating wiki I've ever come across. That said, both are very useful and I'm glad they exist.

I've seen many discussions/debates/arguments/poopstorms over whether a particular work was plagiarized, or whether a particular person is a plagiarist, that stem mostly from differing perspectives on what constitutes plagiarism. But, as plagiarized content is almost never copied exactly in fiction (not successfully, anyway), I feel it's more helpful to look at plagiarism as a continuum than an either/or. To aid this, I've attempted to categorize different methods of imitation from least to most plagiaristic. Each entry will come in the form of a term followed by its definition and a quote that gives an example of that entry.

This is purely an experiment at this point and will likely be heavily revised. All the quotes included so far are the ones that came to my mind the fastest and I intend to replace most of them. Most are too vague; I want them all to be as specific as the Bruce Timm quote. The quote from The Iliad is not what I want because it's not an example of recombining fictional elements, and the Matt Stone quote is far from ideal since it's in regards to a parody that itself was (apparently unintentionally) plagiarized from an existing parody. I'd also like to try not to reference Ghost in the Shell in two consecutive examples. Finally, I want to reference Cassandra Cla(i)re somewhere in here because I find that whole thing hilarious.

My main goal, and it is an unlikely one, is to push through the omnipresent "there are no new ideas" argument used to defend lack of originality by showing how many ways you can imitate while still doing something different.

Before I go any further, I feel it's important to define a few terms as I'll use them in this context:

Derivative work: A creative work that imitates an existing work
Original: The creative work imitated by the derivative work
Plagiarism: Presenting an element the author did not create in the author's work without giving direct attribution in that work

OK, so here's my first attempt at the chart. If you have any suggestions for changes or quotes that would fit better, let me know.

Observation from life
An element that comes from a real experience rather than existing fiction. Variations come in the form of conjecture: things that might have happened but didn't, or speculation as to what may happen in the future.
Neil Simon: "Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life."

Inversion/Subversion
An element that was inspired by one in existing fiction, but which is taken in a different direction in the derivative work. Can sometimes be the result of frustration with a common trope/cliché. Can also be the result of the author's enjoyment of an existing work but desire not to repeat what has already been done.
Bruce Timm: "Batman singing in 'This Little Piggy' was inspired, in part, by the running karaoke gags on Angel but, whereas their joke was that Angel sang goofy songs like 'Mandy' (and not too well), our gag was that Batman's choice of song was entirely in character, and he nails it."

Combination
A hybridization of two existing elements. On the broad end, there are genre mash-ups; on the other end, there are crossovers between existing franchises.
The Iliad, Book VI: "[The Chimera's] front part was a lion, its rear end a snake, and in between a goat."

Parody (hard)
The imitation or exact reuse of an element from existing fiction (with the intention that the audience will recognize an element is copied) for the sake of commenting on it through subversion or pointing out problems, quirks, etc.
Matt Stone: "It was like, 'Let's parody the gobbledygook' – because honestly, [Inception] – all those explanations, and explanations of explanations..."

Parody (soft)
The imitation or exact reuse of an element from existing fiction simply for the sake of finding humor in recognition. Additional humor may be attempted by the inclusion of flatulence or slapstick.
Stewie Griffin: "Sometimes we just steal stuff and put our characters in it."

Tribute/homage (hard)
The imitation or exact reuse of an existing element that the author of the derivative work holds in high esteem. Often done because authors tend to use elements they find personally appealing. The author of the derivative work usually intends for others who appreciate the existing work to recognize the imitation and receive joy from the recognition.
Kenji Kamiyama: "The Ghost in the Shell TV series inherited many aspects from Director Oshii. I didn't try to distinguish myself from Director Oshii. Instead, I totally tried to copy him."

Tribute/homage (soft)
The imitation or exact reuse of an existing element that the author of the derivative work finds appealing. Done in an attempt to imbue the derivative work with a desirable element of the existing work. The author does not necessarily care if the audience of the derivative work is familiar with the original.
Joel Silver: The Wachowski Brothers showed me Ghost in the Shell, and they showed me what they wanted to do with that type of action and photography and try to make it with real people."

Blatant reuse
The imitation or exact reuse of an element done with the expectation that the audience of the derivative work is not familiar with the original. Often the result of laziness; but it can also be done in an attempt to reintroduce a forgotten element the author of the derivative work likes.
Yutaka Izubuchi: "Normally people in their teens and twenties wouldn't know about [Brave] Raideen. I just thought people had forgotten about those type of shows; I thought it would be refreshing to bring it back."
Quentin Tarantino: "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages."

Potential Monkey Wrenches:
Despite trying to establish a scale, many things may fit into several places on the list at once. For example:
J.J. Abrams: "So while [Super 8] never began as an homage to the Amblin films or Spielberg films, it began as a revisiting of a time in my life that was massively influenced by the Spielberg films. So I can't separate those movies from that time in my life."

Furthermore, I doubt it's right to consider a soft homage copied loosely more plagiaristic than a combination of two exact elements. In an extreme example, that would be saying that staging a scene similar to one from another movie is less plagiaristic than a strict combination (e.g. a hybrid of Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog). I may attempt a chart showing overlap but that seems a bit too complicated to be worth it.

P.S. I took a winter break equivalent from updating the Enthalpy website. Updates will resume one week from today.

The animated movie Fairy Princess Minky Momo: La ronde in my dream, dubbed into English for VHS release as Magical Princess Gigi and the Fountain of Youth. Reviewed for YouChew and there may be a small surprise at the end. Or maybe not.

Despite the movie being the bit of Momo media I reviewed, if you watch only one work in the franchise I'd personally recommend the OVA Bridge Over Dreams, or The Bridge to Your Tomorrow. La Ronde in my dream has a more whimsical cartoon adventure tone, so go with that if it's what you prefer, but as far as I've seen Bridge Over Dreams is (in my opinion) the best Minky Momo has to offer. A tricky concept (the hero does practically nothing but wait on a bridge for the entire OVA) executed very well and with a borderline Ghibli feel to it.



OK, bye.

Based on the poll for Best Christmas Icon, I have determined semi-scientifically that Christmas is primarily about the following:

48%, nearly half, is about irony. Enjoying the so-bad-it's-good aspects and the unintentional humor is pretty necessary, considering how much forced, pseudo-heartwarming cheer we force ourselves to dreck the halls with to try to maintain the holiday spirit we're told we're monsters if we don't experience. Who wants to listen to the same boring old Christmas carols every year? Old people, that's who. The younger generations get to ironically experience the cheer and merriment of Christmas in the Stars, Pokémon Christmas Bash, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas.

15%, only 1.5/10 but still significant, is about taking the true spirit of Christmas back from the atheists and other curmudgeons who want to tell us to have "Happy holidays". It's about being insulted when someone wishes you joy but does so the wrong way. After all, Christmas is about togetherness, and togetherness is about sticking with those who share similar beliefs. Interestingly, the concept of putting the Christ back in Christmas is 5% more important than Christ himself.

14% is about Santa Claus. The literal fat man or the spirit he embodies? Or maybe voters selected Santa because "presents" wasn't an option? We don't know, and it's not important. What is important is to enjoy a nice, refreshing Coke.

10% is about Baby Jesus, the least annoying famous baby in the history of famous babies. He grew up and, record has it, died for our sins thousands of years ago, but every Christmas, he gets to relive his babyhood in the hearts of nativity scenes everywhere. They're like Civil War reenactments, but the opposite.

5% is about Mr. Hankey, the gnawing feeling in the back of the 87% in front of it that, despite all that other stuff, Christmas is about unconditional love and tolerance. Or, possibly, feces.

I won't worry too much about the remaining 8%. Once you get down to one or two votes, it's likely just noise in the data.

What I can safely confirm is that Christmas is absolutely, definitely not about Frosty. Whoop-dee-doo, a glorified pile of snow. It's the hat that has all the magic. It's likely Frosty himself is a spirit in the hat that just possesses a snow body.


I hope this has been educational for you as well as holly and jolly. And ironic. Merry Christmas.

Right now I'm not working much because it's getting close to Christmas and Hanukkah and I'm decorating and watching sleighloads of holiday specials. I've done a bit of work on McDarnold's, but overall I'm just enjoying my winter break after spending so many days doing practically nothing but animate the opening.

Speaking of the opening and all the time I spent animating it, it ended up being rather more disorienting than I'd intended and a lot of the animation probably doesn't stand out as well as it looked like it would while I was animating the individual elements. So here are some GIFs and relevant notes.



The monsters seen here resemble those from the first two graphic novels I wrote in sixth grade. The first one dealt with Audrey II-ersatzes and the second one dealt with Blood-Sucking Dinosaur Bowling Pins from the Alley of Doom. This shot was supposed to be much more elaborate, with Udesky and Charles also running across the screen, then a swarm of giant locusts (from the third graphic novel) picking up Udesky and flying away with him. I realized after I animated Nicholas' run that that was far too much to pay attention to in such a short time frame so I decided to go with doing less work.

In The Animator's Survival Kit, Richard Williams says runs have to be done on ones because they're too fast to do on twos. I knew there had to be a way to not have to put twice as much work as usual into the run, so I searched my memories for an animated work I had that was cheap enough that the runs were probably done on twos but not so cheap that the animators couldn't do a good job with the runs. I settled on Pokémon Heroes, remembering its lengthy sequence of Ash running around the city to music that reminds me of "Old Fat Spider" from The Hobbit. I watched some of Ash's runs frame-by-frame and gave Nicholas a slightly altered version of this one:



I think it worked just fine on twos except for the strobe when the camera quickly panned right. I can't really tell why Williams thinks runs can't be done on twos.

Moving on, the pile of rubble that the plant bursts from under was really intimidating to approach. For reference I used this shot from the first episode of Mahoromatic (animated by Yoh Yoshinari, of course). Before I tried animating the pile myself, it seemed almost unimaginable to me that anyone would be able to animate something like that. Then when I actually completed the shot I realized it's barely even noticeable because the eye focuses on the run.



This was the first shot I animated. I based Piggly Oink's animation on a short demonstration Hideaki Anno made in what's commonly called the "Anno Talks to Kids" video followed by a Sonic the Hedgehog spin. I think the multicolored balls forming the gun was inspired by a couple of different drill-forming scenes from the Gurren Lagann movies. I wanted the gun to have a FLCL-ish feeling, but didn't use anything in particular for reference. The energy blast is based on the one the positron cannon fires at the climax of Evangelion 1.11. Rather narrow reference pool for this one, eh?



This was the most difficult and time-consuming shot. It was so difficult and time-consuming that I almost gave up after roughing in the characters, deciding to go instead with a horizontal shot of the Hovermeister outflying an explosion, but I really wanted to explore some moments of fun and beauty instead of constant fighting and fleeing.

I rendered the Hovermeister in Lightwave 3D with three dummy characters inside:



I traced the Hovermeister in Flash nearly exactly as it was rendered, but for the characters I had to be more creative, which meant inevitable errors in their rotation. Fortunately, I think the camera movement made them completely unnoticaeble, which is more than I can say for every other hand-drawn-character-in-3D-world rotation I can remember ever seeing.

I drew the dolphin by hand, using a dolphin somersault from the opening of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie for reference. No, I didn't rotoscope the dolphin. Nor did I save the GIF, so you'll have to find it yourself. After I drew it I felt the dolphin looked too plain, so I squashed it to 50% its original height, rotated it 45°, converted the outlines to fills, rotated it -45°, and increased it to its original height. This made the outlines less boring without me having to do much work.

I had a really hard time finding a reference for a water trail left by something flying quickly and a bit above the water without actually touching it. Eventually I remembered that Pokémon: The First Movie has a Dragonite flying above a sea at a similar altitude.



I have no idea if Dragonite's water trail is anywhere near verisimilar, but it's all I could think of.



The skeleton is the only 3D CGI seen in the final video as rendered, and the only 3D CGI element besides the Hovermeister. I started out by trying to draw the skeleton by hand but quickly realized skeletons were way too complex without going the Ub Iwerks route. I wanted the skeleton to be somewhat realistic, and I decided that a CGI look was OK because the only skeletons Hazard actually fights in the show (at least, as far as I've planned) are virtual ones. So the skeleton is a stock 3D model that came with Poser that I exported, rigged, animated and rendered in Swift 3D.

This was my first attempt at animating Hazard, or, really, anyone with her number of body segments, so I ended up starting over several times. The aspect I had the most difficulty with was giving the sword a feeling of weight, which it doesn't really look like I did in the GIF. I think it works a bit better in the actual video. One element that turned out way easier than I expected was the overlapping action of Hazard's skirt. I remember watching Sleeping Beauty earlier in the year and thinking how impressive the animation of Aurora's dress was, that there's no way I could do something like that, then I got Hazard's skirt right (enough) on the first try without any reference.

I initially wanted Hazard to fight multiple skeletons on a spiral staircase after doing a wall jump (which I decided because the wall jump in the opening to Video Warrior Laserion looked so, for lack of a better word, cool). I made the 3D model for the staircase before realizing the shot didn't last nearly long enough to depict such a thing.



Having a character turn and face the camera is such a ridiculously overused cliche in anime OPs that it was the first thing I resolved not to include in mine, so I'm not sure how this snuck in. But I was too pleased with the way her hair movement turned out to discard it.



Nothing much to say here other than that I used this shot to experiment with my own (as far as I know) experimental in-Flash bloom effect, which you can sort of see on his shirt. It takes more time to implement than it'll probably usually be worth using. I feel now like the shot's too similar to the one that inspired it. In the Kono Mini OP, there's a cut in which a girl with a worried expression runs toward the camera and reaches for it just as it flies out of reach. At the time, I considered mine different enough because the camera is mostly static, the expression is neutral until the last couple of frames, and you can't really tell whether he's reaching for the camera or trying to block it. And because I really liked that shot and wanted to copy it.



Oh, right. The rocking chair's 3D too. I forgot about that. I modeled and rendered it in Swift 3D. I drew Udesky's gramgraw in two extreme positions then auto-tweened between the two of them to make sure the hand-drawn animation didn't stick out over the CGI.

The only other influences I can think of are in regards to the editing method. Near the end of the video, a bunch of animated shots are rapidly intercut with logos and text, similar to the openings of UFO and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Mine's more similar to Evangelion because in UFO you can actually tell what you're looking at.

I had trouble deciding what to put during the last few cuts that go by way too fast to really tell what's happening but that I still wanted to contain animation, so I watched a bunch of anime openings until I found something I could copy. Eventually I came to one of the OPs for the recent Astro Boy series, which had a similarly (but not quite as) rapid sequence of Atom fighting a bunch of enemies in succession.

One of the enemies was a robot that ended up looking much too nice to only be seen for 5/24 of a second. So here's the robot.



No, of course the first episode of Enthalpy won't be out by the end of the year. The animation I finished on Tuesday was supposed to be finished back in early October. But the show itself generally won't be as lavishly animated as its opening. In fact, not counting lip flap, I wouldn't be surprised if the opening contains slightly more "cels" than I've drawn for the entire rest of the pilot so far, if you count each layer as a separate cel.

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