I Am Animating In A Room

I jest not. As far as I am aware, no other flash has been made using the process that I used to achieve the type of animation I present in this experiment, "I Am Animating In A Room."

Enjoy!

1st Movement: "Ghostmas"
2nd Movement: "I am a Legend"
3rd Movement: "One Hour Evacuation"

After over three years of animating it, it is finally done. Perhaps the strangest part about "I am Animating in a Room" is that what it contains was never intended for release, at least not until October of 2009, which when I decided to turn crap into.... confusing crap.

There will a time to tell the full story of this flash in a blog post. The essential information is this: This is a rotoscoping/trace bitmap experiment. Digital effects were added to a video of the compilation of animations, then reimported it into Flash as a series of images, which I then bitmap traced. I then rotoscoped the vectorized bitmaps, using the traced bitmaps color palette to help me replicate it in my own way.

I've thoroughly enjoyed how polarizing my latest flash has been. People are calling it the most epic WIN and FAIL to ever grace the newgrounds portal? Which is it?

YOU DECIDE!!!!!!

MY NEWGROUNDS SKETCHBOOK

It's simple really. I'm making an experimental flash game which requires the recordings of not 1, not 2, not 3, but 120 people recording themselves saying their own name. No prerequisites required. All I need is your permission to use the recording in the flash for free.

Steps:

1) Using a microphone, record yourself saying your real name or even just your Newgrounds alias. You can say it in any fashion you want, the only thing you might want to watch out for is being too loud.

2) Send the recording in .wav or .mp3 format to 120Voices@gmail.com

You will be credited for contribution in the flash of course!

About the Game:
Working Title: The Path We've Taken

This project is very exciting for me because even I am not able to really classify what kind of game it is. It can be musical but in other ways its very visual. It is at once intellectual and also visceral. It toys with your senses and asks you to relax but also extend yourself in ways that you don't usually in games. It does not penalize, but really it does not reward in the sense of compensation for effort (Though it will have medals). At its heart, it is a game about you, the individual, your perceptions of the world in which you live, and about finding the "path" that brought you to this point, or whatever point is currently stalling in the static of your psyche. It has no goals but it tells a story. Your Story.

Sounds simple right? Right. My aim is to build a game that is both an enjoyable experience and also tries to effectively address everything I put in that sort of paragraph.

Obviously these are alot of voices, and no I don't expect to get 120 voices from newgrounds but since newgrounds has always been there to accept my wacky experimentations, I figure I should give back for what will be far my waskiest one yet. Thanks guys!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
515823

Please take the time to view my short 15 second toon about a young superhero named Max. I originally created this as a contest entry to Nickelodeon's "15 Seconds to Fame" but received no callback so I decided to release it here. It's a good 15 seconds of smooth -- if limited -- frame by frame animation. I'm thinking about making a toon of it anyway, even though I'm already swamped with projects. Hopefully, I can get those two out of the way and turn my attention to more "original" storylines.

So please take a look, it's very short and won't take up much of your time.

Yeah, I guess I've never done this before but I've always wanted to. I like making Sound FX from scratch. So if you have an upcoming flash and findsounds.com isn't doing it for you, if you don't want to use the same effects that 20 flashes before you have used. I'm no sound engineer so I doubt I could really make the sound in your flash sparkle without the .fla so I'm counting on you for the most part that once I've given you the sound you wanted, you can make it a seamless effect in the flash. I'm more of a sound alchemist, who mixes in different sounds until I get the effect that sounds good. I have a good mic so don't worry about quality sounds.

It happens to all of us, don't deny. We get the latest NG news post from Tom and we try in vain to read what he has to say. We do it in vain because moments later we unleash our scratchy bitch selves onto our screens in a jealous rage over the cooler than cool pic that Tom has for an icon. As are all the BBS pics of the Administrators of this site, Tom's is custom made by JohnnyUtah in his usual steroid-spiked graphic novel style and it alone demands the respect of everyone on this site. The climate has come to the point that, if ever you see a profile picture like THAT, well that's a NG User to be feared and loved. Well gentlemen, let the conning begin.

Granted, you are the creator of your own profile pic, so it is entirely up to you want to be in keeping with the JohnnyUtah style of portrait, though I think that's one of the things that I think makes the badge what it is. (Note: There is one limitation to this and that is that you cannot use this picture for your BBS post since only your level icon is displayed there. That's the only drawback however)

There are three types of pictures we are aiming to create here. A Badge, a User Page Picture, and a Public Profile Image.

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1) Badge (Create this before you create the other two)

Download the meicon.fla (102kb) HERE to do it in flash (like it was meant to be done), or if you want to work in a drawing application (photoshop, MS Paint etc.) download the BACKGROUND IMAGE HERE and have your way with it.

For Flash Users.
So in creating your profile picture, you'll need a reference photo of you in the pose you want. Once you have that, import it to flash and put it in the layer put aside for it. I suggest offstage. Resize so that it's about twice as big as the stage. lock that layer. You can start your tracing over the picture using the layer above (by tracing, I don't mena rotoscoping, you should certain features follow some further advice to make it look right)

I'm sure JohnnyUtah used a tablet to draw these, and I have a tablet as well, but I settle for simple drawing with lines since my hands probably aren't as steady as his. Black Pencil, Size 1 for everything except for the torso and the hair that is not connected to the face (i.e bangs, side burns) which is size 2. Now I did not follow the style like I should have and realized too late that my head was far to boxy to emulate JU's style. The key is keep the the curves subtle and clean, getting the jaw right, and not letting the eye's or eyebrows get too powerful. Oh yea and big shoulders. I've provided both my picture and Tom's picture for reference. You can also keep the tone and brightness ratios the same even if you are a different skin color (just watch the color mixer to see the change in the brightness. Shape is more important here than shading, which you should use sparingly.

Once you are satisfied with the portrait, you can delete the photo of you, and you can resize it until it compares with the Tom picture. You can then move the new you into the frame until it looks good. Then go to to File>export image. Save it as a jpeg and make sure it matches the stage and not the minimum area required. Export it. Voila, that's your new 100 X 100 pixel Badge.

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2) User Page Picture
These next two are easy to do.
Open up a new .fla (or new photoshop doc) and have the stage size to be 212 (width) by 159 (height) which is the size of all User Page Pictures. Set the background color to #25272D which is the color of your userspace. Goto File>Import. import your badge jpeg and put it in the center of the stage. Now you can export like that. And that's your User Page Picture

Note: You can also resize it so that it is 159 pixels X 159 pixels with a little distortion. The cleanest way to resize it is to open your badge .fla and select your badge image (frame, portrait, and beams) and turn it into a movie clip. Then copy and paste it into your new file. Go into the movie clip and clean away all the excess drawing not in the frame so you can resize it properly. Then resize it so that it's fits in the middle. (159 pixels tall and wide, so there should be 26.5 pixels of background visible on either side of the badge image). Now that's clean!

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3) Public Profile Image

Keep your badge .fla open. but save it under a different name so you have two copies of the same thing. The procedure is simple on the flash side. Simply delete the Sun beams layer and the frame layer, and then change the background color to #FFB60E.

Now you have to resize it to 46x46 pixels and save it as a .gif
(I recommend using photoshop to do this since the flash .gif export is pretty bad quality, to do that just save the public image as a jpeg export of flash, open it in photoshop, and then do the resizing and converting into a gif.)
Now you have an awesome image to go along with your posts and pms and such.

There you have it, have fun making people think you're important. Enjoy!

Everyone Should head on over and see what has been consuming oh so many of my nights for the past year. The most epic Soundboard ever devised (not saying much). This was truly my swan song for all things that are beneath in terms of my development in flash over the past few years. I wanted to end my exploits with a bang, the biggest family guy bang the internet has ever seen. I hope you all enjoy and please leave comments. I'm actually going to be updating this frequently, so I'll be reading your views for serious critiques.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
495891

Wow it's been awhile NG. Well the reason I haven't been posting that much of late is because I haven't been on NG or really thinking about NG for that matter. So there's your explanation. BUT WAIT !!!! THERE'S MORE!!!

Senior in high school + I care about my future + I've done well in school = Very Stressed Out Person Seeking to Get into a Good School.

So there you have it. I haven't really made much progress on my flashes since the summer, including with The Bohemian. That soon could change on December 10th if a certain letter grants a certain yours truly a certain type of early decision admission. Do not fear though my 14 fans on Newgrounds! For even if I don't get into college ED, Second semeste I'm doing an indpendent study on flash animation in which I've scheduled two flash animation to be written and animated for the final presentation at the end of the year. So you can at least expect that much. I don't know if that will leave me alot of time for the Bohemian but if it does please lick your chops because you might soon see my proudest moment come in the very near future.

And once I'm in college my friends, ah the skies the limit. Not to mention I won't be so reluctant as to give out personal info and so maybe you'll get to know me a little better (like you care).

I will detail my independent study later as it develops but I want to hint as the fact that one of the flashes is going to Teacher's Cake 2009. For those of you who don't know about the Teacher's Cake "series" please watch TEACHER'S CAKE 2008!!!!!!!!!!!!! and read the explanation of the Teacher's Cake project. However, this year will be different. I'll leave that as a surprise for now.

So until next time person who accidentally stumbled across this post, I leave you with this awesome video of a high school player making an absolutely Bullshit shot to win a basketball game.

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What did I tell you about setting release dates ekublai... tsk tsk...

Yes people, the sad news is, is that I'm am only 50 seconds into the song at the moment simply due to the pure time consuming effort I'm giving into every delicate frame of flash. It'll all be worth it in the end, Here's a partial screenshot to tide you over.