hey gjys and gjrls,

bit of quick news: my 5-second day piece from Titmouse just had a complete sound-design overhaul. my friend, who does a lot of sound work, saw the piece and offered to redo the sound design based off my initial work. check it out here:

depressing stories about depressed shapes - Dylan Carter

I’m keeping the original version up here on newgrounds. if you’re interested in seeing what a profesh sound design can do for your piece, give the two a watch and compare.

keeping this one short since I’m currently writing up a longer one on thoughts about my titmouse internship this past semester, along with some general thoughts on internships in general. you’ll djg it.

ljoves,
dylan

hey fishes,

today is the start of a new chapter for me.

you may have seen my latest video, “only fish in the sea” on the site today. I’m sorry to say that it will also be my last. 

my creed cover band, inCREEDible, has finally hit the big time. our first original album, “you can’t copyright a vibe” was just released two weeks ago, and the numbers are looking really good. we’re projected to hit top 40 on itunes this week, and it’s looking like touring and making music is going to become a full time gig for me. 

I’ll try to keep the story of how things came together to a minimum, I know you all have busy lives. basically a couple prominent guys in the creedosphere started tweeting about the album a weekish ago, and eventually it worked its way up to a retweet from the lead singer of creed himself. snap of the fingers and a few hundred albums sold. it’s been snowballing ever since.

I was lucky enough to secure the copyright for ‘the only fish in the sea’ from my record label back when we were still writing (before any of this craziness happened), so I was able to make and release that music video here, but from now on I’m guessing it’ll be vevo on youtube all the way up.

I’ll try to keep in touch on here, maybe comment on the forums when I have a chance, but it’s looking like I’ll be pretty busy going forward. best of luck to you all.

sailing the creed winds,
dylan 

hey squares, triangles, and circles,

just wanted to let you know that my 5 second day short film is out now, check it out here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/654002

the piece has been stewing in my head since october, and I had to make it in all of four days. might do a write up on its production at some point. whooooo knows 

hal▢ h△lo hal◯,
dylan

gis and gas,

I'll keep it short this time. not sure if I've mentioned it here yet, but I'm currently interning at Titmouse, so expect a 5 Second Day short to be up in a week or so. if you're in LA you should try and make it out to the Egyptian theatre this friday to see them all screened on a big screen. more on that here if that's your thing. here's a bit of what I'm working on to get your engine turnt.

▢△◯,
dylan

hey you and yous,

so as you may know, just moved to LA. I'll be going to the loop de loop screening tomorrow night at the Nerdmelt Showroom on Sunset to have some drinks, meet some animators, and watch some looping faces. any NG regulars planning on going?

it's not my official loop de loop submission, but here's a face to getcha warmed up.

lovedelove,
dylan

p.s. saw american sniper. tankmen was better.

hey bees and gees, 

remember when I said that part 3 of my photoshop tutorial would be up “this weekend maybe”? Well now it’s 5 months and 1 day later, and I’m posting it on a thursday. if you had your fingers crossed, they’re probably a bit cramped. The benefit of that god-awful wait is that I can now say that this particular workflow has been great to me for an entire year of photoshop animation.

before I get on with it, it's worth noting that some of this was dificult to articulate, so it could be a bit confusing to read at points. if you're having trouble getting what something means, let me know.

if you missed my 2014 year in review post, check that out here:
2014 overview

if you missed the other photoshop tuts I wrote-up, check them here:
part I
part II

my workflow:

So the thing about photoshop is that it’s not suited for creating an entire movie in one file. You’d fry the shit out of your computer just trying to create a minute long short. This means that when you’re working in Photoshop, you’ll be working in shots. Each shot has to have its own file, which can later be composited in the editing program of your choice (after effects, avid, final cut, etc.)

I typically start off using flash to get a basic idea of timing for my animation. I create a project and do some (incredibly) basic storyboarding in there. It’s like stick figures and strangely proportioned people with terrible line quality, but that’s cool since no one is ever gonna see that snazz. it's just for me to kind of realize what I'm going for.

I get my idea of timing, then I create a scratch track in pro tools (audio editing software, you can grab audacity for free). The scratch track just has the big, important moments. Things like explosions, gunshots, dialogue, that kinda stuff. I take that scratch track, put it back in Flash, and then mess with my animatic a bit more. Mostly just tweaking the timing to better fit my audio track. If you’d like, you can take this animatic and put it into your editing software to use as a base for adding finished animation onto.

Once I’m happy, I leave Flash and jump into Photoshop.

Start by adjusting your framerate. Can’t stress it enough, unless you enjoy working in/converting from 30fps, you need to change the framerate from the start.

Then I just create a regular ol’ layer with a 3-8 frame duration and begin to block out a shot from my animatic using my F1 hotkey whenever I want to create a new frame. Working forward, I go in large chunks of like 8 frames. Eventually, I’ve got all the key poses. Now to time it, drag the ends of the layers in or out to make them the proper length and slide them along the timeline into position. 

I start adding breakdowns and in-betweens on new layers between the poses until I’ve got my rough animation completed. At this point, I’ll generally color code my frames by right-clicking the little eye-icon, marking all of this character’s layers as green, and that character’s as blue, etc. in case I need to reference them later. Sometimes I’ll put them into folders as a quick way to label them and keep them out of the way.

Time to batch them on video layers! I create a new video layer above everything and hide all the layers (including that standard white background layer) except for the frames of one character/object/whathaveyou and the new blank-vid layer. Using the cmdF9 action to batch it all together, I end up with one video layer for each character in the scene. Repeat this step until all your animated bits have their own video layer.

Then I hide all of the original key layers, leaving only my video layers and BGs visible. The I create another set of blank vid-layers to do my cleanup on, and then color on a blank video-layer beneath them.

Yay! That shot is done. Time for the next one. And the next. Eventually I’m done with all my shots, and it’s time to export. Pretty much all the tutorials I posted cover that well, so I’ll let you refer to those, and adapt it to whatever editor you’re using. Then I create my finalized audio track based off the final animation (which was rendered out silently as something like ‘myAnimationVx_forSoundV1’), add that to my editor and render out the final products you see on my Newgrounds, Vimeo, and (gif’d) Tumblr. 

So that’s the Photoshop process, goes surprisingly quickly if you have all your actions set up. I should note that this is only the gist of it, there are plenty of little things and techniques I use that I haven't written. As you use the program, you'll start to develop your own workflow and technique that'll feel almost like your own language. This is just a sort of branching off point.

So, what’s next? What I like and dislike about photoshop. Maybe I’ll post it before 2016.

looking forward to it,
dylan

So guys 'n gals,

it’s been a while, huh? sorry for the silence these last few months, super busy stuff from me all around. the big one is that I just moved to Los Angeles (Burbank specifically), literally got here three days ago. took a two week long road-trip with some friends to get here, which is why my ‘year in review’ is coming so late. 

I moved here as part of a school program that places me in LA for a semester while I find an internship. I’m really excited for it, and I’m sending out a bunch of emails now, looking for places to work. I’ve got a few that I’m already heavily considering, but we’ll see how she goes. 

any recommendations on studios/food/bars/etc. from local newgrounders? 

I’ve basically got the semester to decide if the LA life is for me, and once I graduate this spring I’ll decide where I want to live and work.

2014 glance-over

2014 was a fantastic year for me here. at the beginning of 2014 I posted about ditching youtube, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision. solely newgrounds for my main publishing has worked out fantastically. still keeping my tumblr & vimeo up to date, but NG is really my home as far as my works go.

I started the year with ALZ for the stencyl jam, which ended up going kind-of-semi-viral and got posted all over the place online. Places like The Verge and The (french) Huffington Post and Hyperallergic all wrote articles about the piece, which became my most viewed project ever. I’m still riding the tail-end of the project’s effects, and I can’t really believe how much it did for me.

Then I entered NATA, placed fourth overall. I made a few pieces that I’m really proud of, in particular spider bite movie, the red snow, and voicemail. I didn’t win, but those films all really helped me find the best photoshop workflow for myself. hopefully I’ll have time to enter again this year.

I also started messing around with submitting gifs to the art portal, a few of my favorite pieces from the year are elephant abstract, ∆ll the pretty ladies, and dysmporphia, which earned me my first front page slot for an art piece.

I also finally (almost) finished my thesis film, which I’m now doing the whole festival-submission song and dance for. Looking forward to trying out that line of publishing as compared to the online showcase. it’s weird not being able to publicly showcase the piece here until later in the year, though. it’ll be almost 1.5 years after work started on the piece before I’ll be able to share it with you guys. sorry!

pretty solid year in my opinion.

loves,
dylan

Hey kids and kiddos,

I'm getting that next photoshop writeup ready, should be putting it up this weeked maybe? keep your fingers crissed.

there's a slightly different version of my latest film, spider bite movie, up on vimeo, check it out if that's what you're into

Also, just as a heads up, there probably won't be too much from me in the way of full animations this fall. I've got two major projects that I'm working on that are going to take up a lot of my time:

• super-secret project #1: my animation professor has recruited me to animate on his short film. I probably shouldn't say much at the moment, but it looks like it'll be a lot of fun. plus it's looking like there'll be a big name attached to it, oh and it's got whales. and it's paid. so, yeah, right up my alley
• not-as-secret project #2: just a larger-than-normal short film that I'll be making with some peeps that'll take a lot longer-than-normal to animate. probably update you guys on this one as it's made.

other than that, I've got a long-term project where I'll be trying out as much animation software as I can get my hands on. I'll be doing a weekly or bi-weekly writeup on the software I use, along with creating some short animations with them to release under a creative commons license for you guys to use however. It should help people decide on what animation program is right for them so that people will stop having the stupid conversation about whether flash or toonboom is better. 

lovin you,
dylan

go look at my dumb art

find me elsewhere:
tumblr
twitter
vimeo

hey paps,
So my run in nata has come to an end. It was a fun time, but I got the boot. Here’s my piece in case you missed it:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/643508

Music, again, by TheGoatee. I’d say it’s my best piece of the tournament and easily one of the better ones I’ve done overall. Losing is never a fun thing, but losing after putting my best effort into it eases whatever bit of sting there was. I’d much rather go out with a piece like this than something I might try and make excuses for.

The two guys up this round are StejkRobot and ButzboPrud, an awesome matchup that I think was pretty much a given since novice round. The theme this time rocks, and I can’t wait to see what will come of the StejboPrud and ButzRobot style mashups.

Back on my submission, I think the best judge writeup came from Emrox this time:

It nicely sums up the way I felt about the piece while making it. My deal this round was that I didn’t want to do another deepish-metaphory-comefeelshittyaboutyourselffortwominutes kind of piece since I was getting super burnt-out on that stuff. I wanted to make something that was exactly what it appeared to be on surface level, something that was fun to work on. I ended up settling on this kid looking for a frisbee and a spider catching a ride home.

As I worked on the piece, I started to go about that idea in a way that I feel ended up giving it this ambiguous meaning about relationships between man and nature. But I guess it’s up to you to decide if that’s pretty neat or if it’s just a bunch of pretentious bull shit.

love you with all my heart,
dylan

P.S. my next ps writeup will be posted as soon as I have my website up n running. My Dumping Grounds keeps nearly filling up each time I have to add a movie or whatever, so I need to wait til I have some other place to store the Creative Commons files.

hey there waitors and waitresses,

next photoshop animation writeup is coming soon, I swear, along with some PSD files from my most recent NATA animation. For now, here’s that animation, in case ya missed it:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/642369

It was on the front page for a hot minute, but didn’t seem to drive much traffic in the week or so it was up there. I feel the horribly shitty icon I chose is to blame. I’m gonna have to work on that in the future.

The score was again by TheGoatee, go follow him. He seriously deserves more followers than he has now. He did I think 3 of the scores this round, dude's getting around and he should be on your radar!

I was up against CroMagg, who made a schweet installment in his Zanthar series. Overall this round, StejkRobot deservedly took the cake with his goddamned amazing piece, Desperate Measures. My other two favorites this round were Butzbo’s and Brewster’s pieces. Love those guys. Watch the rest of NATA intermediate here.

I made it through to the next round, which I’m honestly surprised about. It was the first (and possibly last) round I've had the whole time free to animate, but I was so indecisive that I only landed on this idea five days before the deadline. Basically, the round I had the most time to work became the shortest one yet. Ugh.

It’s not that I think the piece is bad, for the five days I worked I’m quite happy with the result. It’s just that I had sooooo much time that I should have been able to work on it that make it feel like a wasted opportunity. I’m getting ready to jump on this round as soon as possible, so hopefully it goes well. 

Also, it looks like I’ll be compiling this next Sarcastic Collab, the Sarcastic Robotic Collab! if you want to join in, sarcastically animate a robot, PM me a link to your 720 x 405 24fps sarcastic animation, and I’ll add you in on the fun. Tentative deadline for submission is July 18th, Robot Day.

all my loves,
dylan