Nicholas's Weird Blog

Coinciiiiiii

2010-10-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

I just logged into my blogger account today for the first time in quite a while (certainly the first time in a long time I've looked at the last time I posted) and noticed my last post was one year ago today. I'm increasingly using my deviantArt journal and Newgrounds news to post bloggish things, especially things about Enthalpy, so this blog isn't nearly as necessary as time forgot. This certainly hasn't been a production blog... until now. This place is a good place for posting records for myself that I'm not necessarily showing other people for critique.

Frame-by-frame animation of Nicholas and his similarly drawn comrades is getting easier and I'm keeping the proportions consistent more intuitively. Frequency of Ctrl + Z usage is slightly above acceptable limits. My current strategy is to animate everything on twos and then go back and continue adding tweeny keyframes to the spots in which 12 FPS looks too jerky, but unfortunately so far that seems to be just about everywhere.

Here's an example of a bit of in-progress animation that I assumed I could do on twos but I couldn't. In its current state, there are a couple of problems I'll have to go back and fix, most notably that the paper changes size as Nicholas lifts it up, but when I started it didn't look right at all and I wasn't sure why. At first I thought I didn't ease the movement enough, but that wasn't the problem. I decided to watch myself do the motions in the mirror and made these important notes:

-The most obvious difference between what I did and what my animated doppelganger did was that the side of my shirt was lifted up as my arm tugged it. TV cartoon clothes are usually drawn as though they're skintight even when they're not, and I'd fallen into that trap. I went back and redrew the side of Nicholas' shirt so that it's very subtly pulled up near the sleeve as he raises his arm. Not nearly as noticeable as my real-life shirtpull, but it works better.

-When I lifted my arm, it stopped moving slightly after the rest of my body. Ah, right, of course, I thought. Overlapping actions. Of course I knew of the principle of overlapping action in animation, but I didn't even think to apply it yet. Silly me.

-When I lowered my arm, it bounced as it hit my leg. In fact, it bounced twice. When I tried animating this it didn't really look right and I eventually ended up making a rubbery, cartoony smack. I'll probably try the bounce again.

I'm still doing a lot of learning right now. Hopefully future cartoons will take way less time because these sorts of things I'm still teaching myself will immediately come to mind as I'm drawing.

Dreams Should Be Grand

2009-10-21T03:13:00.000-07:00

Well, my deviantArt journal is serving me quite nicely, so what is this blog still good for? Pipe dreams, yes. Yes, yes.

Unlike most individuals my age, I haven't had any interest in moving out into a house, apartment, etc. This changed when I found out about Tony Alleyne's Star Trek: Voyager apartment. I am not particularly into Star Trek (I've seen one episode of the original series and two films; that's it), but the place is absolutely aesthetically lovable. If I could afford an apartment and was able to make it look all awesomely futuristic, I'd do so in a heartbeat. I mean, it'd take way more than a heartbeat to move all my belongings, paraphernalia, and crap over to my world of tomorrow, but idioms rarely make sense when analyzed.

Then a few minutes ago I somehow stumbled upon THIS. Hitoshi Takahashi is some strange kind of hero to me; he built a fully functional giant robot beetle called Kabututom RX-03. It has a moderately spacious interior and, unlike that cheapo lifesize Gundam, can actually walk. It took ol' Takahashi-sama eleven years to build the thing, but I say it's time well spent. The YouTube video embedded on the site was removed for copyright infringement, but it or a similar video is still up here:

Watching that video, it hit me: the ideal home isn't a house or an apartment with a futuristic interior. It's a mobile giant robot with a futuristic interior. Some people have mobile homes; why not an awesome mecha version? The obvious answer is that, even if I knew how to make something of that sort, it would cost a porkload of money and apparently take over a decade to finish, but I already established that this is a pipe dream.

So there it is. I'm making it my goal to someday live in a giant robot with a sleek, futuristic interior. Or at least it could be my summer cottage or something.

This Isn't a Production Blog for Nicholas' Weird Adventures at All, Is It?

2009-05-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

So it turns out I'm 19 and I haven't finished any other Flashes except Saunich der Hejhaug. I think it's the best looking Flash I've ever made, though I know I can do a lot better if I work on it for more than four days.

I'm learning Torque X 2D and C# now to attempt to make an Xbox 360 game to sell in the Community Games section. Please make a note of it.

Oh yes, and it turns out I'm still making YTPs... for now. I just made my first one in quite a long time last night after a long drought. I enjoyed making that one, but I don't expect to make frequent poops.

,,ɹoop s,uǝʌɐǝɥ uo ,uıʞɔouʞ,, ɹo 'puǝ ǝɥʇ puɐ buıuuıbǝq ǝɥʇ

2009-03-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

Making Youtube Poops doesn't really hold much joy for me anymore. Currently I'm going through a couple of leftover jokes that I want to use, then I intend to retire. Consider this your warning, world.

Now, not only has it been nearly a year since I started Enthalpy, but I am almost 19 years old. Crot! I'm supposed to finish some kind of epic masterpiece by the time I turn 19! I wonder if that's the least bit feasible at this point.

I recently began to feel like I really want to make something very artistic and masterful and not just fun and silly like I've been doing. That's on my to-do list. My left eye itches. I recently came up with a great plot for a serious, short animation, but... for some reason, I don't feel like doing it. Yes, I love the idea and the story and everything, so I have absolutely no idea why I'm not that interested in making it.

I have the eventual goal of making an animation that breaks Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings' record of being the world's longest animated film. Not that I'd want to pad something out just for the sake of having that record; goodness, no. Actually, it wouldn't be hard at all for me to fill up two hours and forty-five minutes with tons of story. It's really hard for me to write short things because all my ideas tend to end up epic in nature.

Wouldn't it be great to see a feature-length animated film with visuals made entirely in iClone and music made entirely in Songsmith? I think so. Not that it'd be possible for the end result to be taken the least bit seriously.

エンテァルピ

2009-02-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

Technically, it's been almost a year since I started work on the first episode of Enthalpy. However, I didn't start any REAL work until May 5th, and never actually used what I made on February 25th last year, so I'm counting May 5th as the actual start date. I'm really concerned about the time it's taking me to finish this, as I don't want any of the future episodes to take nearly this long to animate.

Of course I haven't been working on the episode this whole time. I'd say more than half of the days of the year I haven't worked on it at all. I've spent a lot of time making other things, such as YTPs and computer games. Today is the first time I've made any real progress on the episode in weeks, but I animated a whole four seconds today. I'm going to try to stick to the Harvey Birdman routine of animating an average of four seconds a day... I meant to do that from the beginning, and indeed did stick to that schedule for a while, but then didn't.

I MUST finish this episode by the beginning of May. I'm still sticking to my plan of not releasing the first episode until I've nearly finished the second one, and BOY do I hope the second doesn't take nearly as long to finish as the first. It's certainly not as elaborate in terms of what I'll have to animate, but the fact is I'm not just making two episodes. I have scenarios written down for over THIRTY episodes that I intend to make, so I'm going to be occupied with Enthalpy for the next several years at least. I hope to eventually be able to afford to have an actual animation studio animate the series, with me animating the parts that I need to have done a certain way, but I don't see myself being able to afford something that expensive in the near future.

History of Internet Flash Quality

2008-12-06T14:36:00.000-08:00

After making my previous post discussing Flash animation and tweens and such, I remembered my fourteen-year-old self being annoyed when people on Newgrounds criticized certain Flashes (particularly those made by Legendary Frog) for using "too much tweening". I didn't think tweened Flashes looked worse than FBF Flashes at all; they were just "different".

I knew I wanted to get into Internet animation when I was 13 years old once I saw The Return of Ganondorf. I was really into Ocarina of Time at the time, which made this video really stand out to me. You can view it here. Not only did I find the video hilarious, but I thought it was amazing that it was animated entirely by one person. The best Flash cartoons I had seen in the past had animation like this at best:

I still find the video pretty hilarious, and the animation gets the job done as well as it needs to, but it's nothing special. Note, however, that I said the Flashes I had seen were animated like that at best. They were usually much more simplistic and had absolute minimal movement. Unfortunately, the joke sites I visited back then are no longer in existence now. I was able to view gotlaughs.com using the Wayback Machine, but none of the Flashes were available and, sadly, I can't find them anywhere else. Most of those crappy short 'toons seem to be lost in the mists of time...

Anyway, my point is, I thought that The Return of Ganondorf's animation was amazing. I scoured the rest of Newgrounds for more Zelda animations, but was rather disappointed that none of them seemed to be nearly as high quality in terms of animation (and most weren't nearly as funny, for that matter). See, back in 2003 and earlier, Legendary Frog quite possibly did put the most effort into his Flash animations. Making a Flash frame-by-frame was completely unheard of. However, as time went on and more and more people started using Flash, more people started putting more and more effort into their animations. Countless people could make Legendary Frog-quality Flashes and higher. From what I remember, the first people I saw truly transcend the 2D motion-tween style were John and Richie Zirbes, the creators of Perfect Kirby. The first two episodes (broken up into six Flashes) were nothing that special in terms of animation quality (though I still found them pretty funny), but with the appearance of Perfect Kirby 3.1, the bar was definitely raised. No one (on Newgrounds, at least) had tried to give the impression of 3D movement using shape tweens. In fact, it was so unheard of that many people assumed a 3D program was used for a large quantity of the animation. It was, however, made entirely in Flash, which was pretty mind-blowing.

Looking back on the animation of Perfect Kirby 3, the animation is still really smooth, but the drawings themselves are generally pretty bland and amateurish. The limb joints don't fit together that well, and the 3D tweening often distorts. At the time, however, it was the epitome of great Flash animation. It remained that way until Fallen Angel: Teaser came along in 2004.

The animation was still mostly motion tweened, but a lot more detail was put into the individual drawings than in most Flashes. The first Flash I remember seeing that used a lot of frame-by-frame animation was part 2: synj vs horrid, which can be viewed here. The drawings were rather simplistic, but the cartoon had a lot of fascinating environmental effects, the likes of which I had never seen in an Internet cartoon before.

Of course, that meant I had missed the animations of professional Disney animator Adam Phillips, whose cartoons were the most widely acclaimed on Newgrounds. I didn't think that much of them at first, but after viewing an editable .fla of a scene from Prowlies at the River, I was in awe as everyone else. Phillips mainly animated environmental effects, so that's where his greatest abilities were. Pretty much no Internet Flash animator has surpassed Phillips' abilities yet except Phillips himself, who puts more effort into every Flash he makes than the previous one.

Now, Prowlies at the River was released in late 2004. A bit over a year earlier, The Return of Ganondorf was the epitome of webtoon animation quality. But Prowlies COULD have been made in 2003. The technology was available. No precedent existed, however. Most people were used to seeing stiff, minimal animation in Flash cartoons, so most people didn't aspire to do that much more than what had already been done. Thus, Flash evolved over time based on the fact that people gradually tried putting more effort and time into their work.

Now, it wasn't until very, very recently that I found out that John Kricfaluci was, in fact, the person who made the first ever Flash cartoon. Before The Goddamn George Liquor Program, Flash was pretty much just used to make banner ads and simple games. Macromedia continued to develop the Flash program based on Kricfaluci's input, and he help shape Flash into what it's most known for today: making Internet cartoons. Of course Kricfaluci dislikes most of what's done with Flash today, but he still uses it. To quote his blog:

Flash looks like Flash no matter how hard you try to hide it. At least so far. It is basically an inbetweening program, not an animation program. The inbetweens - like in all computer programs are too mathematical. Hand drawn inbetweens make your animation feel more natural, because things don't move mathematically in real life.

Flash is only as good as the drawings you put into it- and how many good drawings. The less you do, the more fake it looks. Ever since I started using Flash as a necessary evil, I have been trying my damnedest to make it look as little like Flash as possible. If I was able, I would go back to the 60s system of limited animation. The reality of the situation today is that there are no animators capable of what the animators in the 60s did. We have not done animation in the country for 35 years now so no one even knows how it works.

Generally, I concur. Boy, would I love to make traditionally animated cartoons, but it's just not realistic. I have no budget whatsoever and no animators working for me. I have to make the whole thing myself, and the only way I can do that is in Flash. If I want to actually finish more than one Flash a year, I have to use tweens.

However, I disagree with John K. on a couple of things. For one, he mentioned that he prefers 1960s Hanna Barbera limited animation to Flash. As I've said before, I just can't make myself see what he likes about The Flintstones. While the character models themselves can look rather appealing, the animation just hurts. I definitely prefer the animation in The Return of Ganondorf.

For another thing, he said "Flash looks like Flash no matter how hard you try to hide it." It's very, very rare for me to see a Flash cartoon that I don't realize is made in Flash as soon as I see it. However, I occasionally do. For example, I had no idea that those Cocoa Puffs commercials were made in Flash before I read that they were. Another example is a Flash version of the theme song to Azumanga Daioh!, "Soramimi Cake". The person who made the Flash version just traced the original version of the theme song in Adobe Illustrator and made the final product look... exactly like the original. I can no longer find the Flash itself, but here's a link to a blog entry from the person who made the Flash version which shows several screenshots detailing the process.

This post was supposed to be about tweens vs. FBF, but before I got into that I felt I should post this stuff. My next post will be about what I meant for this one to be about.

Wii Wiill Waiit a Whiile

2008-12-03T02:19:00.000-08:00

I came upon a fact a couple of days ago that threw a wrench-type dealie at my WiiWare plans. You know that menu that comes up whenever you press the Home button on your Wii remote? The one that shows the buttons asking if you want to return to the main Wii menu, reset the game, or view the operations manual? It turns out that the only way to implement that menu is if you have the official Wii development kit, which I don't. And if you want to get something published on WiiWare, Nintendo has sole discretion as to whether your title is made available or not. Of course they're not going to avail a game that was obviously made using a freeware homebrew development kit and doesn't even have the same Home-button menu that every single other Wii game ever made has!

That is why I've decided to return to DS development for now. I'm more familiar with DS programming anyway...

Since I never got past pre-production, I now intend to develop Enthalpy: Detectiventure for the DS. I figure it'll have enough gameplay that a buyer wouldn't be disappointed (I'm expecting/hoping that it'll be released as a "budget title" anyway); I also read IGN's review of the Shaun the Sheep game for the DS a couple of days ago, and it apparently only has about one hour of gameplay. IGN gave the game a 6.6 out of 10. While I'd hope for my game to get a better score, at least that shows me that my game won't be the shortest.

I'm not starting development on Detectiventure just yet, though. Back in October (I think), I entered DA YCP MAKE A VIDYA GAEM CHALLENGE, intending to make a 3D computer game to teach myself to use Torque Game Engine. A lot of slacking and a lot of problems/glitches led me to decide to make a simpler 2D game instead. I still want my game to stand out, though; thus, I am making the game for the DS. It'll also be a good learning experience, as I'll be teaching myself how to do certain things along the way.

The game is still planned to be called Saunich der Hejhaug and feature that creepy Sonic doppelganger guy. I've already finished the opening splash screens and title screen (music included). I'm pretty sure I can finish this by Christmas.

Currently planned game timeline (subject to change based on my decisions as well as those of others):

-Finish Saunich der Hejhaug game for the DS by Christmas and release it for free as homebrew
-Make a 2D Enthalpy game, also for the DS, and contact O3 Entertainment or another company of that sort. Release it as a commercially available game in stores and such.
-Form an actual company (a sole proprietorship, of course) and apply to be an officially licensed Nintendo developer.
-Buy a Wii devkit, most likely using money obtained from sales of the Enthalpy DS game.
-Hooray! I can make Wiistuffs now (and by now I mean in the semi-distant future).

Irrelevantly, shortly after my previous post, I started feeling like I was being too hard on automatic tweens. I'll talk about that in either my next post or the one after that.

Determining What Constitutes Good Flash Animation

2008-11-29T15:22:00.000-08:00

Flash animation is often criticized for being cheap and limited. And, indeed, it often is. Ever since Mucha Lucha came on, more and more Flash shows have made their way onto the air. Why? Because Flash is much cheaper and easier than the traditional pen-and-paper method; you draw directly into the program, move stuff around using automatic tweens, and voila!

Unfortunately, most Flash animations take advantage of this for the sake of time and money and at the expense of quality. The truth is, you can animate pretty much anything in Flash (anything 2D, anyway). For example, take a look at this Cocoa Puffs commercial:

Just by watching this commercial, I had no idea it was animated in Flash. It wasn't until reading about it at Cold Hard Flash that I found out how the commercial was truly made. Why? Because the cartoon doesn't use any automatic tweening... or if it does, it does so very surreptitiously. More television Flash cartoons should be animated like this: frame-by-frame. It's still way cheaper than traditional cell animation, and it's pretty much indistinguishable. Instead, television studios usually just take the easy route and automatically tween practically everything along a 2D plane, and when something has to move along a 3D plane, they make the movement as quick and jerky as possible:

Mikey, supposedly animated in the "American" style, is super-duper 2D, and his motion primarily involves sliding his limbs around using automatic tweening. The Japanese characters, supposedly animated in the style of "Japanese animes", are animated frame-by-frame. However, their motion is pretty minimal and, when they do move, it's obvious that the animators don't care about going off-model. In fact, there doesn't even seem to be a standard model that the animators stick to. Yes, anime generally has a lower frame rate, but more detail and care is generally put into every frame. The animators of Kappa Mikey try to emulate anime style and fail miserably.

Here's an example from the first episode of the anime Death Note. Yes, yes, the English voice acting is awful and it ruins the whole show and all that. Just focus on the imagery.

There are several points during this clip in which there is little to no motion at all. However, it still looks good because each still frame has a lot of detail. Every shot is well-composed and dynamic, even if it's barely moving. Camera movement also helps add a sense of motion to an otherwise static picture. Sure, Death Note certainly had a higher budget than Kappa Mikey does, but the point is that even when Death Note used limited animation, it was still done with a sense of art and purpose.

And you know what? That Death Note clip could have hypothetically been animated in Flash (minus the 3D flythroughs; you'd need a separate 3D program for that). Heck, not just Death Note or another show which uses limited animation, but any cell-style 2D cartoon could hypothetically be made with Flash. Sadly, the fact that Flash makes things easier tends to make animators lazier. They resort to using practically nothing but 2D tweens instead of using them to supplement frame-by-frame animation. Frame-by-frame animation in Flash cartoons also tends to look like it was done by people who don't know how to keep the proportions the same between keyframes. This is probably because animators who learned Flash in animation classes and whatnot only learned how to use Flash's functionality, not basic-intermediate drawing and animation principles.

Now, do I think that a show that mostly uses tweening is always bad? Certainly not, as long as the tweening looks natural. Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law wasn't exactly perfect at making tweened animation look natural, but they often did a pretty good job within their limits (only two months to animate a single episode):

I think that clip looks pretty good. In fact, I'd say that, since Harvey Birdman had a very limited budget, its animation quality benefited greatly by moving to Flash. (Actually, in the first one and a half seasons, before it used Flash, Harvey Birdman looked a lot more like a classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon, partially due to the fact that the animation was so limited).

So, yeah... I think that Harvey Birdman's Flash animation works for it. It's practical and, while not entirely natural, it still works pretty well. In Kappa Mikey, the clumsy animation distracts me from the story and the jokes (which, in Kappa Mikey's case, is probably a good thing).

But what about Internet cartoons? Surely a single person can't be expected to constantly churn out television-quality animation? Yes, for Internet animation, I can understand lowering one's standards. Animation considered great for a Saturday morning cartoon could seem cheap and bland if used in a theatrical cartoon, and in the same way, animation considered bland for a television cartoon could be considered great for an Internet short animated by one person. For example, Fallen Angel currently dominates Newgrounds because of its fantastic animation (it must; the story has no originality so far and the acting is atrocious). But if it were shown on television, the animation would be considered sub-par.

But wait! Less cinematic Flashes would still seem to fit in pretty well on television, as is evidenced by the fact that the Nicktoons Network shows so many in their film festivals. For example, TANKMEN is primarily motion tweened with a bit of FBF animation, but since it's so simplistic, the tweening works rather well. It doesn't aspire to be very dynamic, and thus the simplicity doesn't hurt it. I don't think I ever found the jokes to be that funny, but apparently a lot of people do...

In truth, I like the visuals of TANKMEN more than those of Fallen Angel. Fallen Angel's animation aims for a lot of detail and cinematic quality. But because it does such, a lot of flaws stand out at me and distract me from what's supposed to be an engaging story. I know that's not how most people feel about it; they just admire it for what it does accomplish. I suppose that's part of my "condition".

Anyway, as for Enthalpy, I'm trying to make it look as natural as I can within reason. Yes, it uses a lot of tweens, but I'm hoping they don't look awkward like they do in Kappa Mikey. It also uses a whole lot of frame-by-frame animation, and that takes a very long time. If I had a team of talented animators working for me, of course I'd prefer to have it done mostly or entirely frame-by-frame. As it stands, however, I have to use a lot of tweens if I want to finish more than one episode every couple of years. I'm hoping that the still visuals are engaging enough that the limited animation isn't distracting, and that the tweens move in ways that you'd expect them to actually move.

If I didn't care how long it took me to finish a cartoon, and I wanted to spend upwards of a year on a five-minute short, I truly feel that I could make cartoons as lavish as those of Adam Phillips (see Waterlollies, for example)... however, whereas Phillips likes to animate on threes and fours and add as much shading and detail as possible into every keyframe, I'd go for the route of making the animation look smoother before adding porkloads of shading levels. Personally, I'd prefer to have two layers of shadow animated on twos than four layers of shadow animated on fours.

Before concluding this blog entry, I'd like to muse about Superjail for a moment. Superjail is animated entirely in Flash, and it's animated almost entirely frame-by-frame, which is practically unheard of in Flash television shows (especially for Adult Swim, which has a notoriously meager budget). However, despite the smoothness, the show's visual style has a lot of not-caring-about-staying-on-model. Characters' proportions often change as soon as they turn around, and the drawings themselves aren't exactly technically marvelous. I can't really decide whether I consider the animation "good" or not by a television standard.

The visual style is engaging to watch, and it'd certainly be considered great animation if it were an Internet Flash animation, so I suppose I like it... still, in stuff I make, I'd prefer to stay on-model and have fewer drawings that each look good than to have a lot of sloppy drawings. Superjail's drawings are indeed rather detailed, but they're still sloppy.

ADDENDUM: Another thing to take into account is that certain styles of animation work for different styles of cartoons. For example, while the animation in the Cocoa Puffs commercial is great compared to the majority of Flash cartoons, it would be incredibly out of place if used in Death Note. Death Note has great drawings (for the most part), but its visual style would be very out of place in Harvey Birdman. Motion tweens work well for Harvey Birdman partially due to the simplicity of the characters. I wouldn't say that the motion tweening always looks terrible in Kappa Mikey; what's annoying is that Mikey moves smoothly along a 2D axis and "pops" into the next position whenever he should be rotating in 3D.

Put Me On Your Wii

2008-11-26T19:22:00.000-08:00

I've been putting it off for far too long. I'm starting Wii game development tonight, and will hopefully finish a quick experimental text adventure game similar to my first (and probably last, considering that the system is now obsolete) GBA game, Toast: The Great Adventure. You can download the game here (right-click and save as, then either run in a GBA emulator or put it on one o' them special cards and play it in a real GBA). I didn't actually put my name in there (at least, not anywhere that you can see without pressing a secret button sequence), so don't putting it up anywhere without permission or claiming it's your own, 'K?

So, here's what I intend to do in terms of Wii development:

-Tonight, I will start work on a similar, very short text adventure game for the Wii. No graphics; just text and probably a few sounds.
-Once I have done that and am more settled into Wii programming, I will start work on a visual novel-type game which I hope to get published as an official WiiWare title once it's finished.
-As I am not a licensed Wii developer/publisher and am making this game using public domain development libraries and software, I will have to get a licensed company to publish it for me. My first choice publisher is O3 Entertainment, a company which specializes in publishing games made by independent developers. The company is probably best known to people in the Newgrounds community for publishing the Alien Hominid game for the Gamecube and those other consoles that I didn't buy it for.
-If it does indeed get published, hooray! I've gotten a game officially published on the Wii, and I shall go on to make other games from there. If it doesn't get published, I'll just release it as homebrew.

What will this game be like? As I said, it'll be a visual novel. I don't believe any visual novels have been released for WiiWare outside of Japan (probably because companies consider it too risky to make something for such a niche market?), so I'll have a chance to be the first. I'm choosing to make a visual novel because they're rather simple to make, and I can easily emphasize the storytelling. It will use 2D graphics, music probably made by me and/or Ramon Osborn, voiceovers, fully animated cutscenes, and probably several Phoenix Wright-style courtroom-type trials, because those are so awesome and fun. Oh yes, I can't believe I forgot to mention: it's going to be an Enthalpy game. Its working title (and probably final title) is Enthalpy: Detectiventure.

How long will it be? Since it's WiiWare and thus I can sell it pretty cheaply, I don't have to make it very long. After I beat the WiiWare game Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Episode One: Homestar Ruiner in a bit over thre hours, I decided to see how long it would take to play it after I already knew how to solve all the puzzles. Replaying it, it took a bit under forty-five minutes to beat. Therefore, I figure my game should take at least forty minutes to beat, and I'd like to add multiple story routes to make sure there's a bunchload of replay value.

I may end up just quitting halfway through developing the game, considering how hard it was to motivate myself to finish making Nicholas' Weird Adventure 2... but then again, this is something that I hope to actually publish and sell and make money off of. I made $700 off NWA2 through Maxgames.com's sponsorship, but didn't expect to when I was making it.

It's Pooper-Dee-Duper

2008-11-23T01:28:00.001-08:00

I'm trying to remember, for historical archival reasons, everything about why I got into Youtube Poop, and my thoughts and actions that surrounded my (de/a)scent into poopery.

If I remember correctly, I saw the first YTP I had ever seen while searching on YouTube for "giant enemy crab". I found Sony's E3 PS3stravaganza video hilarious, especially the "giant enemy crab" part, and wanted to see more.

I had seen still shots and a couple of animated GIFs from the CD-i Zelda games, so I knew what I was looking at when I saw this, even though I hadn't seen the cutscenes in their entirety. So, anyone who was wondering what the first Youtube Poop I ever saw was "Zelda CD-i: The Evil Forces of Giant Enemy Crab".

Watching that video piqued my curiosity, and from there I watched the original cutscenes for the CD-i Zelda games and Hotel Mario. The cutscenes themselves were the epitome of hilarity to me at the time, as their animation was so... um... I don't think I could describe it if I needed to (which, thankfully, I don't).

I started watching other YTPs from there. Among the first I saw was one of Nickshorts' David and the Magic Pearl poops. I may have actually even seen that one before the one I mentioned earlier, but I doubt it.

The poops that inspired me the most were those of Calculate900 and the magnificent "Link + Dinner = Disaster" duology. I knew I wanted to start making these, and I felt that I'd have an advantage in terms of the stuff I'd be able to do, as I had Flash and most poopers just had Windows Movie Maker and MS Paint. I hoped to become a well-known pooper, but certainly didn't expect to become the most subscribed-to pooper ever. I made it a goal to try to become as well-known as possible, but wouldn't have considered it likely that I'd be as popular a pooper as I am now.

I made Link Gets Cancer in one day, and did several things that I'd never do today. For exa--... Meh, I'm sure I'll do a commentary at some point. I'm not going to bother to do that here.

Kricfalustuff

2008-11-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

I've been working on the first episode of Enthalpy for how long, now? The first file I created for the Flash, a poster meant to go on the wall in a dental office, was apparently created on February 25^th, 2008. I'm not actually using that poster in the final animation, but that counts as working. I didn't start any actual animation until May 5^th, though. And from then on, my progress has been rather sporadic.

After animating over a minute of this ~three-minute pilot episode, I started reading the blog of John Kricfalusi. Why? I don't remember. I believe I was searching for something in particular, but I can't remember what. Regardless, I started reading his blog and learning a lot about animation techniques and such. I became fascinated by it and read quite a bit within a couple of days.

Of course, this led to the feeling that I was doing everything wrong. I felt like I should trust his judgement, as a lot of what he was saying made sense, and his animation style is quite possibly my favorite out of all cartoony animation. On the flip side, I disagreed with him on so many things. For example, he absolutely hates Animaniacs and, in fact, wrote a kaibunsho* for the cartoon shortly after it started. I hadn't realized it was possible for anyone (anyone who likes cartoons at all, anyway) not to like Animaniacs, and it seemed rather inconceivable that anyone could actually hate it. But Kricfalusi hates everything about it. Though I certainly wouldn't say the animation quality compares with classic Looney Tunes, I laugh way more at practically any given short from Animaniacs than from Looney Tunes.

There's the "Cal Arts" style as well, which he dislikes... as well as pretty much every Pixar film (it's possible to dislike Pixar films?!), CGI in general, and fake pathos. And, of course, his appreciation for certain Hanna-Barbera cartoons that I find really boring to look at... The Flintstones literally makes my eyes hurt to watch for too long. And what exactly is his opinion on anime? He appeared to outright dislike, if not hate the umbrella of anime drawing styles, but made a whole post about how great anime color is and gives quite a bit of praise to FLCL (which is admittedly pretty cartoony as far as anime goes). And I don't quite get his hatred for the Fairly Oddparents drawing style; while simplistic, 2D and geometric, it's fresh and different in a cartoony way. I'd hazard to say that I'd find a freeze frame from FOP more interesting to look at than a random freeze frame from a traditional "rounded" cartoon.

Am I ignoring most of what he writes while animating? Absolutely not. I'm taking a lot of his advice. Would he still hate what I'm making? I'm pretty certain of it. Enthalpy isn't really all that cartoony as far as cartoony cartoons go; although the drawings are heavily stylized, I like to keep the drawings as on-model as possible, even at the expense of expressiveness. And I find pop culture references funny (that is, if you're making an actual joke with the pop culture reference and not just throwing it out there for the sake of throwing out there, which is the only problem I've ever had with Animaniacs).

*A suitable English equivalent for the word didn't come to mind, so I left it Japanese.

ただいま

2008-11-23T00:38:00.000-08:00

After reading my nephew Severin's blog that I just found, I decided to return here to read the things that I wrote oh-so-long ago. He made a post about my stuff, even. Oh, how flattering 'twas to read it. And how nice it was for him to embed the unauthorized, low-quality YouTube video files into his blog page instead of linking to the higher-quality original versions on Newgrounds.

Now, onto my thoughts on my older posts:

-I currently have no desire to get my creations on television. Sure, I'd have a team of animators that could actually help the cartoons look the way I'd like them to (i.e. with a lot more motion and moderately more detail), but after reading things Jhonen Vasquez and John Kricfalusi have written about working with Nickelodeon... blaauurghhh... I suppose if I were to have absolute creative control over the final product (as well as any merchandise made from the show), I'd like to have a television show based on Enthalpy, but that's completely unrealistic.

-I thought Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi-quality animation was worth striving for? Wow, I really have come a long way. Foster's Home has nice animation, but HHPAU's animation is just typical jerkiness. It's better than what I made when I was 15, I suppose, but certainly not worth trying to emulate.

-Yes, I thought those background drawings I did for McDarnold's and such were ATHF-quality. But now my backgrounds really are of that quality, I swear. Maybe looking back on this post when I'm 21 I'll laugh at that statement, but then again, maybe I'll be completely braindead by then. Now I can laugh at my future self's misfortune.

-Sealab 2021 wasn't Flash either.

-If, for some bizarre reason, someone wants to buy some of that archaic stuff from my dilapidated, crusty CafePress shop, do it now. That stuff's not going to be up much longer.

-Freehostia is a free host with constant uptime and great bandwidth allowance. I also have projectenthalpy.com and am currently paying way too much for it.

-CamStudio is like Camtasia Studio, but completely free. Also, I'm not using After Effects for animation at all anymore. It's great for tweening, but not so much for frame-by-frame animation, which encompasses a lot of what I'm doing now.

-I never finished that White Noise spoof, but I'm pretty sure I still have the little that I did animate saved somewhere. I had forgotten all about the fact that I had actually started animating it.

More to come in a rapid succession of braindump posts. I still don't think anyone is reading this, as a search for "Nicholas Walstrom" now links to a plethoraload of sites hosting the Nicholas' Weird Adventure games without permission. As with before, this is for myself. Therefore, I'm not going to advertise this blog anywhere, such as YouTube, Newgrounds, or deviantArt.

Nicholas Flash Released!!!... A Long Time Ago. O_o

2005-06-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

As soon as I released it, I started to write a blog notice about it, but then my compy crashed and I lost everything and didn't write for a long time. The address is:

http://newgrounds.com/portal/view/238399

Hopefully this will shed light on some of the characters, even though it's only one minute and eight seconds long. I made it short intentionally because I figured something short would be easier to finish. I was right. Now I'm working on a longer Nicholas movie that spoofs White Noise and all ITC-related stuff.

particleIllusion too!

2005-05-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

YAAAAY! I finally got the actual non-demo version of particleIllusion! I also made a short clip with it, but it's 12.1 MB so I'll save it for a compilation DVD or something.

After Effects

2005-05-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

After effects finished downloading before I got up this morning, and I can definitely say it's WAY more versatile than Flash. Especially because I can import what I've done from it into a Flash movie, and vice versa (though I wish I could get something that worked better than Camtasia Studio for a reasonable price.) My only problem is that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I'm learning bit by bit, and I finally finished a 10-second movie. You can view it at this link, which is pretty small considering how high-quality it is.) After I learn how to use it, for DVDs I may completely switch to just After Effects and particleIllusion, leaving Flash for web-based toons.

One more thing: I said I would introduce my characters, so I'll start off with Nicholas, as he was first. Or maybe I'm a little biased as he was created in my likeness. XD

NOTE: I am having trouble getting the picture up here. I'll edit this post later with his image.
This is one of the three main protagonists, Nicholas. Despite what most people who have read my comic books think, he IS NOT ME, as I made clear in Survivor: Folletto Island. He is a character BASED on my qualities who lives in a universe parallel to ours, which also has several other people who live in our universe or based on people who live here, including my sisters, my parents, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Probst, Howard Stern, and Nicole Kidman's evil clone.

I was wrong!

2005-05-13T00:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought Aqua Teen Hunger Force was made using Flash, Photoshop and particleIllusion, but it doesn't actually use Flash at all. I assumed it was as it looks like it is, and quite a few other shows on [adult swim] are made with Flash. Harvey Birdman, Venture Brothers, Sealab 2021 (I think, though I could be wrong as I was about ATHF), Home Movies, and maybe some others I'm forgetting. I am currently downloading the trial for Adobe After Effects, which is used in lieu of Flash, and from how it's described I can see it's going to be great. Unfortunately, it probably won't be finished until after I go to bed.

So far, I have only my CafePress shop I made to buy my own products from listed as my website, at http://www.cafepress.com/enthalpy, but I'd prefer to have my own domain soon. At least a .TK domain. However, I'd need to find a free host with good uptime and great bandwidth allowance. HAHAHAHA, like that'd ever happen. XD

I feel I should probably post information about the characters my stories revolve around, along with pictures, because at this point anyone that might possibly be reading this blog other than me (a.k.a. my father and whoever else he sends the link to my blog out to) would have no idea what Nicholas's Weird Adventures is. I will post some information about these things tomorrow probably.

Background Information

2005-05-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been working with new effects in Photoshop that I learned from tutorials on www.good-tutorials.com, and I can do ATHF-style backgrounds quite easily. I'll probably do my backgrounds William's Street-style from now on. Here's an example of an Aqua Teen Hunger Force-style house that I made from scratch:

Salutations, Nicholas.

2005-05-09T22:33:00.000-07:00

I'm mainly just talking to myself right now, as I haven't revealed that this blog exists to anyone else, and this is mainly just for myself anyway. I tried a blog before and promptly stopped after two posts, but I think this will work out better as it is mainly a production blog as opposed to a blog about my life. I will post every once in a while with content based on Nicholas's Weird Adventures, a.k.a. Enthalpy. So far, I am working toward hopefully getting my characters on TV. I've submitted a pitch board to Frederator Studios for Oh Yeah! Cartoons's new season, though they're getting hundreds if not thousands of pitches and, while I may have as much of a chance as anyone else, it's like a lottery. I've recently gotten a DVD burner, which works spectacularly, as well as Particle Illusion. In the mean time before/unless I get on TV, I intend to start actually getting into animating Flash movies about the characters Nicholas, Udesky, Charles, Piggly Oink, occasionally maybe Ambrose Kerry, and perhaps a cameo of Tom. I am very experienced at Flash, though I've not really gotten used to animating these characters. I've only really put them in one full Flash movie, and that was my Alexander the Great report at Trinity Valley, not to mention it used different character models. My current ones are much better and much more versatile, as I've gotten a drawing pad since then. Once I get used to them, I hope to get up to the animation quality of, say, Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, or Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.