Still working from home. My complete do-over of the artwork in Phungus & Mowld is almost done. Just a few more tweaks and corrections. As predicted this threw me back about one full month, but I think it was worth it after all.

Craving Attention

Nobody reads this blog. I’m really wondering why I’m still writing it. Maybe for posteriority if fame strikes in a few years. Ha ha. But anyway if I’m going to take the time to collect my thoughts, findings and worries about creating this animation, I might as well do it in a format and on a platform where more people could take interest in it, so I’m planning on posting a couple of videos vlogging style on YouTube.

I’ve outlined a few episodes with main topics, mostly about how I’m tackling the task of creating a cartoon animation as a one-man operation, without prior knowledge of “how it’s done”, and what roadblocks I ran and still am running into. I’ll share all the mistakes I learned from, in the hope people might find this information helpful or at least mildly amusing. I have even created the thumbnails for seven episodes already.

Next thing I find out is that you can’t mirror your iPhone anymore in Quick Time Player on Catalina, so I have no idea how to shoot those vlog episodes without being able to monitor my camera (no, I don’t want to shoot with the rear camera in 720p, it’s bad enough I have to use a fixed lens phone for that in the first place). I can’t really ask my son to shoot that stuff with his z-cam, although that would be glorious vlogging with a 4k cinema camera. Talk about total overkill.

Know Your Weakness

Now it has become crystal clear that I suck at drawing architecture, I don’t even like doing it. Drawing in perspective is always a challenge, but when it comes to massive structures like space ships and hangars, it’s even worse. I just have no idea what angle to take, what to show. My compositions suck, and background artwork takes ages to complete, more often than not I end up having to completely redo some artwork, because it won’t work in the end when putting in animation. This is my achilles heel and the first thing I’d have someone else doing, if I had the money to pay people for it.

Once I tried to visualise how the actual cockpit of some space ships might look like I found out that it’s almost impossible to film within that confined space, or at least get the kind of angle with a real camera as I was drawing without giving it much thought. So after re-creating some of the cockpits in 3D to get an idea how that would look like in reality, and totally despairing at what I found, I now have given up any realism regarding size and space confinements in rooms, and probably will have tons of spaceships that are bigger on the inside or at least camera angles that are just plain impossible. Screw it.

Writing Scripts

I’ve been re-writing everything from episode 2. Initially Maelstrom was a two-episode story, which I have condensed into one. This will feature a new female alien that I think I want to make into a recurring character. So I’ll be updating the progress summary on the top of the P&M production sneaky peek, as of now it looks like this:

On a side note, the script writing software, Slugline, that I’ve been using to write my properly formatted screenplay scripts, has just gotten a sweet update to version 2, and now features revisions and some other niceties. This will be very helpful to track revisions, when I have to re-record parts of the narration. Great!

Recruiting Narration Reinforcements

The more attentive of you might have wondered, when I mentioned a new female character, how as a one-man operation I intend to narrate that character. I’m already feeling the limitations of my untrained voice, because lately all characters seem to sound the same to me, so I won’t even try to do a female voice, but somehow that character just felt right for that kind of story, and after I did a few first sketches of the character I wanted her to even be a recurring character.

I have already asked around people I know who would be ready to narrate a female character, but it turns out acting in front of a mic isn’t easy, so now I will either have to shell out some money to get it narrated professionally, or I can just hope to get lucky and find someone who would like to take a stab at it (for free), but I will promise some royalites if the series ever makes the break. Worst case scenario: redraw and rewrite the character as male. But then it’s a different dynamic and won’t be as good.

If you think you can do voice acting and are happy to work for free driven only by the hope of becoming a star in about 100 years, and my endless nagging, please contact me, I’d be very insterested to talk to you…