Thursday, February 14, 2008

An improved way of showing the cartoon

Here's a link to the new cartoon, rendered out in Flash video. It looked better as an mov file but it's only 17mbs instead of 670! and should play as soon as you click on it.

I've really enjoyed reading your comments on this cartoon, and thought I'd write a little more about it.

I found the music on a google meander, liked the sound, didn't even NOTICE the title of the piece was "Sally You not Ashamed" until after I'd chosen it and I went back to see who actually did it. I was listening to a series of pieces in a category. Is that serendipity or what? It's not a loop, it's a whole recording. Since I may go back and extend sections, eventually it may play all the way through. The music gets hottest right over the end credits!

As an artist I suffer from "horror vacuii", I think that's the term. Fear of emptiness.

It works for me and against me. It means I put lots of details in and work pretty quickly to complete things, make a whole, but in Flash it's so easy to slug in pieces of animation that maybe aren't as good as they could be, but they're filling it up.

Then I get used to the look and don't go back and change things. Whereas when animation was still in its medieval pencil> cel stage everything had to be as good as it could to go through that laborious process. You didn't want to have to do any editing if possible. Now in Flash I have to force myself to go back and improve things. Whereas Namowal, who's just learning Flash, makes all her experiments look perfect. So does Linda. I try to think of them both so I don't just put the lid on the can and leave the room.

Another thing different about Flash that I have to remind myself: extra screen time doesn't mean extra expense. In the cel animation days every extra cel cost extra dollars, for inking, painting, and film process. So I tried to keep everything moving along as quickly as possible.

But looking at this cartoon after not working on it a few days, I started thinking that a few pauses as the two women regard one another might help to make the humor set up better.

On the other hand it's intended for cel phone distribution, where attention spans are notoriously short.

14 comments:

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

I tried to play it, but the video player wouldn't show a picture. Probably something screwy on my end.
I can say that I liked the jolly soundtrack.

Anonymous said...

My video player didn't play it either. I will wait for the zip. Download time was about 30 minutes.

Anonymous said...

Correction
I got it to play with a different player. It is classic Sally with cool music and great color saturation. Just love bringing inanimate things to life in your work. Question, why use captions? Voices are easy to understand. Keep up the good work.

Mars Tokyo said...

It's 631MB !! and I tried to download it and the estimated time (on a DSL connection) is 2 1/2 hrs! I guess this is why they invented the Flash application. Oye.

Sally said...

Thanks fearless freep- what player did you use? I put titles in as an experiment. If you wanted to watch with sound off you could still get the action. Just a cel phone experiment. What player did you use?

Sorry, namowal, I'll figure out a better way. I don't know my way around Quicktime. Sorry, mars!

Anonymous said...

RealPlayer Sally

Anonymous said...

Great! Thanks for reposting. It's wonderful. I read over all of Linda's comments from yesterday's post and agree with everything she said. She always was the best art director. The lamp and the picture frame are hilarious.

Linda Davick said...

I also love Whinsey's eyes and how they move when she dances, the fat woman's red hair that has a life of its own & bounces back up when she pushes it down. I like things like those little colored flags on the top left when the fat woman walks onto the screen. The jelly fish as time travel institute vehicle! I was going to ask if Lionel Belasco said "Sally you not ashamed," but then I googled him and found out he was born in 1881. I know a while ago you were talking about being shocked when you looked at the cartoon actual size (tiny, for cell phones.) I wondered at what size you work on it--did you say? I've gotta go back and see...

Anonymous said...

It's great how you wove in all those details ... the digital picture frame... and the vacuum shoes are a stroke of genius!

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Ha! That was funny!
A bit more racy than, say, your Sesame street 'toons. I've replayed it a few times and I keep noticing new things! I loved all the gadgets and crazy props, and how Whinsey dances through much of it. Crazy and cute!
It was a kick hearing the no-nonsense Cepstral voices saying goofy stuff, including the complaints about the vacuum cleaner.
Thanks for the sneak preview.

One question- how'd you get the music to loop seamlessly? Or was that the entire song?

Anonymous said...

Oh this is great. I love the music. I love the death of Technofart girl. Whinsey rocks.

Anonymous said...

This is looking better to me all the time; have you worked on it more? The dancing reminds me of "Laugh -In"! It is too funny that's the actual title of the music you chose!

Anonymous said...

sally--this here dial up girl ain't seen-heard anythang of the cel venture, but I do love, indeed love, the Sally unashamed musical coincidence. If that isn't a sign (of what?) I don't know what is.

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

"Namowal... ...makes all her experiments look perfect."
Ich? lächerlich!

*blush*