The game I’ve been working on for the past year and a half is finally, officially announced!

Age of Empires Online Official Site
Sign up for the beta and experience first hand the addictive fun of the game!

Robot Entertainment Game Page
For even more information on the game.

Age of Empires Official Twitter
Follow for instant information regarding the game!

Some of the new features I’m itching to try:
Make your own 3D cartoon movies on the fly with 2 cameras shooting simultaneously (no post processing)!
Direct export to FLV!
Create 3d objects and have full camera tilt on all 3 axis to shoot that 3d object from all angles!

Animate Pro was the most powerful digital 2d animation software I’ve ever used. Animate Pro 2 seems like it’ll take that 1st place spot easily!

I know I’ve used a lot of exclamation points, but I’m just eager. And if you’re eager too, let me know. Because if you plan on purchasing the software, $1999 ($1799 sale price as of 20 April 2010), I can give the first three people to email me a promotional code to purchase Animate Pro 2 for $1199; an $800 savings from the original price. BUT, you have to act fast because the promotional code expires 30 April 2010. So within 10 days from today you would have had to contact me and purchase the software with the promotional code to receive the discount. Whew, that’s a quite a bit to process. But if you really want the software, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Here’s my email address written in a way that I hopefully won’t get more spam. I’m sure you computer savvy people will figure out how to email me:

chaz AT chazamation dot com

The information I need from you is your name and the email address you intend to use when you purchase Animate Pro 2. (I have no intention to and will not solicit your information to anyone; however, I must email ToonBoom your information as required by this promotion.) After I have received that information via email I will respond with the promotional code.

Please do not comment to this post with your information if you want the promotion. Pretty please only send emails.

Three THINGS to Remember

1) this is limited to the first three people that email me with their correct information
2) this promotional offer ends 30 April 2010. So act fast!
3) the promotion offers a $800 discount off the original $1999 price putting the purchase price at $1199
4) yes, I’m adding a fourth, I left off the $.99 on all the prices I listed. So, when you’re in checkout mode and you realize everything is $.99 more expensive than I said it would be, don’t come asking me for the difference. I will not give anyone $.99.
5) oh… yeah, a number five… if they charge tax don’t ask me for that either.

If you’re curious, these two older posts show the animation I’ve created with Animate Pro 1:

snake eyes run
irate nun

Though this isn’t a vast amount of work, I can confidently say that Animate Pro 1 easily out-performed all other digital 2d animation software I’ve used: Intuitive and easy of use, capable vector drawing, rough to color all on the computer in one program, no drawing on paper, no scanning paper, no killing trees, more oxygen for everyone. It’s a win all around!

Have a happy day!

color soon.

enjoy!

Clean/color = soon.

Enjoy.

Snake Eyes is the most bad ass of all the GI Joe! So if you want to see the rest of the art work I created: click on the image!

I’ve created this avatar for my work’s art blog Art Bot Central. Be sure to head over there and check out all of the awesome art work created by the talented artists at Robot Entertainment.

Every now and then, since I don’t get to do it at work on a regular basis, I get an urge to do some acting animation. The 11 Second Club is a perfect chance for that. The competition gives animators the opportunity to challenge themselves with an eleven second sound clip that typically contains dialogue. What’s perfect about the 11 Second Club is that you get great feedback on your work from all sorts of animators with different backgrounds, and there is a time limit. Constructive criticism is invaluable, but without the drive, motivation, and that all important deadline (and submission showing it to a community of animators); then you’ll never get the feedback you need to push yourself further.

I’ve entered the competition once before here. This time around I decided to do a bit of 2d animation. That alone made it enough of a challenge to complete, but the other kicker was that I started working on it only one week before the September deadline. I really had to push myself, and work as hard and as fast as I could to complete the animation in time. Especially since I only had my spare time, which included after work hours and twelve hour animate-o-thons on both Saturday and Sunday.

After listening to the dialogue a billion and one times, I drew out some thumbnails for my idea of an upset nun dealing with an unruly child in a harsh way. I tried to figure out the highs and the lows of the dialogue, and what I could do with the pause. From the start, I thought that the nun needed an outward action (something for her to react to) during the pause, to justify her hauling the girl off to detention by her ear. In the image below of my thumbnails, I thought of the child blowing a bubble and it popping.

That idea of a nun and a child interacting came quickly for me, and I moved just as quickly to get some seriously rough blocking ideas down and timed to the dialogue using my thumbnails as a loose guide. Despite my idea of having something for the nun to react to during the pause, I didn’t put it in the blocking because the pause was too short for the timing I had in my head for the bubble gum bubble. So I scrapped that idea.

From there, I really tried to clean up my drawings (nothing perfect, especially since I’m such a poor draftsman and I didn’t have a model sheet.) I also worked with the blocking making it a bit tighter. My wife also gave me the great idea to have the child stick her tongue out at the nun during the pause. I thought it was perfect, so I added it in right away. This stage moved really slow for me, because I had done all of the blocking drawings in Photoshop, but (long story short) after I imported the drawings into Animate (the 2d animation software I use) from ToonBoom I had to redraw and trace all of the blocking. Lesson learned on that one.

After I was happy with the blocking, I moved onto adding in my breakdown poses.

Then my inbetweens.

After that I added the overlap/drag/followthru for the hair and backpack of the child, and the robe and habit for the nun; which is shown in the first video. Along with the help of my friends, I tried to direct myself along the way in an objective manner to keep everything concise. There are things I wish I had done, such as add a background layout drawing; however, considering the time limitations, I’m happy with what I produced.

Technical tidbits:
24fps
shot on twos and some ones where necessary
after blocking it was pretty much straight ahead animation the whole way
slightly larger version available here under personal @ 480×270

Large version here.