Just a little something something to keep this blog alive...

Bill Plympton's global guard dog jam!

Hey everybody,

You've seen the film, Guard Dog, by Bill Plympton, right? Well, a couple of months ago, he decided to do a remake of that film with a unique twist. He invited artists all around the world to reinterpret each shot and combine them for a Guard Dog Global Jam type of film. You can check out all the other wonderful artists' shots here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=117799591612110

Here's my finished shot for the film, shot 37 - "Silhouette Walk 2"

final animation from jodie hudson on Vimeo.

It's all done in with solids and masks in After Effects, here's an early version of it with just the solids.

rough test from jodie hudson on Vimeo.

The pupils in the eyes are huge because I had to compensate for the various effects I had around it that "ate" away at the clean outline to give it a more painterly feel.



Here's the original painting that I did on canvas for the look of my shot.



I ended up using it as a basis for the textures and background in After Effects. I wanted to try and keep the original painting look, even though it was going to be done in After Effects. In alot of ways it's similar to the tests I did a while back on this blog with full animation done first on paper:

http://jodimationindustries.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

Since the animation, in this case, was a lot less complicated than that though, I just decided to do the animation completely in After Effects without doing a pencil test first.



Lastly, here's an outtake if I went with a more shaggy look.

fur dog from jodie hudson on Vimeo.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun to work on, and it was very cool seeing all the various styles and mediums people chose to do their shots in. Hand drawn animation, computer animation, cut out, stop motion, you name it, it's in there. We even had a 10 year old working on a shot! It's cool too that it's a remake so you know the story, and you can have fun looking at all the various interpretations the artists came up with.

New post, how many asian comments will this get?

Hey, still alive, and kicking. I see the asian part of the world is really taking a liking to this blog. Been doing alot of thinking about being an artist lately and life in general, but instead of boring you with stuff like that, here's my first real attempt at drawing on a tablet. I figure I need to learn how to not draw like a 5 year old on it so here you go:



Greatest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ever! I've always wonder this, any real readers that read this blog. Like I was a little kid when this show came on, but for teenagers who watched this show, did the fact that the turtles where teenagers help you to identify with them? As a kid, beyond the name, I always looked at them as adult turtles fighting crime. Like I didn't attach any significants of the term teenager in the name.

And Asian spammers......GO!

P.S.(Could one of you spammers at least tell me what language you are using? Thanks!)

New animation!

Here's a little animation I've been working on during my free time. I got a lot of fixes to do on this, but I figured I'd post something since other stuff I've been working on I can't. Plus checking my email, I see I've got two more comments on the last post from spammers using Asian letters. They have been pretty aggressive, I've got 14 comments on that post! Wouldn't it be more effective to spam blogs that have regularly update posts with many viewers? Apparently it's better to spam blogs with no readers and relatively few new posts. Or maybe they are spamming me to encourage me to update my blog, as goodwill or a community service act to balance all the evil stuff they do with spamming. Who knows.

panda bear from jodie hudson on Vimeo.

Happy New Year!

Well, figure I better post something so here, I could write a summary for this but meh

3 years!!!

Oh my god, It's been three years! I can't figure out what day in October it was, so I'll go with today. I'd like to thank the first person who commented on this blog, and inspired me to continue with this journey in cyber space. Come on down, Franco! Actually we had a rivited conversation on my first post (without any artwork on it). Yeah, that's right, he believed in me, even without seeing any artwork on the blog. How many of the rest of you readers can say that?

Franco: very nice blog!
My name is Franco Di Giacomo
Would it make fun for you,
to make money in the Internet?
(Income for Life!)
Yes?
NEW Business, see the GDI video
www-franco.blogspot.com

me: Would it make fun for you to learn correct English?
It's kind of hard to make a judgement on a first post on a blog, buddy.
Don't put crap like this on my blog!



Ah the memories...

The end of an Era

I know, I know, hold back those tears, my friends. We all know it would come to an end eventually. Just like rising prices in the housing and stock market, it had to end, right? The Wonder Pets series is over. (Well, technically, Nickelodeon could call at anytime and ask for another season, but they are kind of pushing it, what with everybody layed off right now.) Maybe later I'll write about the experience of my first job working on a animated television show from my perspective but I have to collect my thoughts on that. But here is a caricature of the Creative Director who was intrumental in designing the look of the show, Jennifer Oxley.




I'd like to include horror stories of her but in truth, I only met her briefly once and she seemed like a very cool person, so I am sorry.

And I found this while trying to put together my portfolio and copying old files, not sure why or when I did this, seeing as how Pluto is my favorite character, but I did.

Free stuff!

Now that I have a little free time on my hands(read:unemployed), I've been reading alot. Books, you say? No although I do have time to finish reading "A thousand Splendid Suns" and a few other books that have nothing in common with one another except that they have all been halfway read by me. But I digress. I've been reading on what people think the next economic model is for online media. Seems like everybody's saying you should give your content away for free. Sounds crazy at first, actually, it still sounds crazy, so I got to do more research. But I guess the reasoning is that in the internet age, content can be reproduced infinity and the millionth copy is no less perfect than the original. That single fact drives the price of content to zero. Traditional media like books and dvds make money because there is only a limited number of them. Thus the price is dependent of the cost of the actual physical media on which the content resides. So you give away your content for free because it is infinite and get people to buy real items like t-shirts, autographs and other exclusive stuff.

The only downside I see (And I admittedly have to do some more research on the subject so I can fully grasp what these people are proposing) is now your profits aren't tied to the main product, it's tied to the secondary products you sell. Which means it's possible for more people to own your content than buy material goods from you. That wasn't possible in the old model since the material goods you sold contained the content, excluding piracy. Also while once the content is made it become infinite, making the content is a finite process, and cost money, which can only be recouped by the secondary products since you give the content away for free. Anyways these people know a hell of a lot more than me, so listen to them.



A discussion on the scarcity vs infinity model.
http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html
there is a lot of more good stuff on this website about technology

Here's one on how to make a living in comics through this model.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/09/what-newspaper-cartoonists-can-learn-from-web-comics273.html

here is one on the indy film making.
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/bill-mechanic-on-moguls-bad-decision-making/

I found this a long time ago that has a lot of good stuff about the changing media environment.
http://www.buzzmachine.com/

oh and this Pencil test blog, which is the greatest Idea ever!
http://www.penciltestdepot.com/

And I found most of this stuff through Keith Lango's blog and Mark Mayerson's blog. You can find them on my blog list, they have plenty of awesome animation related stuff on their blogs too.

So for all people that are like, I don't want to listen to Jodie's crazy ideas he just learned about on how the market works in the internet age. I didn't come to be brainwashed, I came for drawings, here is a logo I just did for someone. Plus, I personally would skip all that reading on account of the fact you can't just click on the web address, you have to copy and paste them.