Wednesday, November 07, 2007

SOMETHING OLD...

Geez; I don't know exactly how many years ago we did CIRCUS PEANUT. It was my first pilot that ever got developed; the boys at SIX POINT HARNESS, before they were technically called that and right before they had a studio are the ones who animated it--and the irreplaceable AARON SIMPSON helmed production duties as well as art and animation. He's a one-man army! What an experience and education. One of which were BACKGROUNDS. Our backs were up against a tight spot: CP was being animated in FLASH and my only experience with it was via the internet/webtoons. My biggest complaint was its "flatness". I loved ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE, so I attempted to utilize and exploit "limited animation" as much as it's own art form as one would use a color palette (which would've been cool--except there are sequences in CP that I couldn't even tell wasn't traditional; oh my God--ERIC PRINGLE is a magician, to say the least. Anyway; my solution to "softening" up the look to a Flash cartoon was to use TRADITIONAL BG's, most everything done up until then were vector-based, flat, click-and-fill backgrounds (suitable for the internet). Seeing as this wasn't designed to stream the superhighway, my #1 stance on this project was its backgrounds. That's all well in good; but technically we had a budget of an animatic and more or less 2 weeks to produce it. That meant no money to hire an actual BG painter--and turned out, no actual time to implement myself...until I said "Hell no!” I believe around 8pm one night--and turned in 40-plus fully rendered BG's the next morning. I think Aaron said: "You're insane", first--and then: "Well, okay", next. Here are a few images I was able to scan. I hadn't time to learn how to ACTUALLY paint with the proper tools, so I thought: why fake it? So I used a combination of markers, colored pencils and even crayons. I suppose I was going for a children's book feel, while still being heavily influenced by Jay Ward.







That being said; if anyone possesses a copy of CIRCUS PEANUT and knows how to put up on the web via Youtube or whatever--not only would I appreciate it, but I'd even do an original marker comp for you!

7 comments:

Raynard Castillo said...

These are really nice pieces Andy. Its got me really excited to see the Circus Peanut Pilot. Hope to see it soon!

SteveLambe said...

These are marker and crayons!?! We gotta talk shop one of these days, cause those look fantastic.

Lunch soon?

T' said...

I think they work perfectly well as they are. Innovation is often more exciting than tradition. Wish I had that footage; I'd easily trade it for something!

Chris Battle said...

Ahh, Circus Peanut! Brings back memories of our hopeful youth...

btw- Download Handbrake from the internets, use it to rip your DVD copy of CP into a nice lil' Quicktime file, then create a YouTube acct. and upload. It's easy. C'mon and join the future, Andy- There are jet packs and silver suits for everyone!

SeƱor Chips said...

I don't thinks I have the final version, but I can get you a quicktime of the one I do have and you can get it posted. Magician? I dunno, I remember being drunk most of the time during CP.

SHANE PRIGMORE said...

Oh man those are appealing. KICK ....ASS! I love that short man.

Bill Robinson said...

One night? Damn, these are great!