A Chuck Jones Alarm Clock

Every household should have one! 

AI is an idiot!!!

Lately I've been working with AI. I've been told that it could completely take over and revolutionize the entire entertainment industry. Maybe that's true or maybe it's not, but either way we should all see just how this AI stuff operates if only so we can better understand what it does and what it's capable of doing. I've seen it used in some commercials and Youtube channels so I can already see some of its potential. But, after working with it for a bit, I can tell you that so far it's a ridiculous headache. 

For those who've never done it: AI basically operates by something called a "prompt". You have to type out in as much important detail as possible exactly what you want to see and/or hear. You can even upload any photographs or drawings of your own as "visual aids" for the AI program to use. But, so far for me, typing anything into these prompts is like asking an idiot to move my couch. You tell him "...I just want you to move it from this corner to that corner..." Despite your very concise instructions, he's shoving your couch up the wall, through the wall, out the window, he's throwing the cushions at the cat... pretty much anything but those (what you thought were) very simple instructions to understand.

Do you remember that movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Remember how upset the director Raoul J Raoul got when Roger saw tweeting birds instead of stars? Imagine how upset he'd be watching the following AI messes I made.

I'll show you the visual aids I drew up that I hoped would help the AI program understand exactly what I wanted:

The set up was simple. Vladimir Putin is standing there. My boy Avery walks in with a mallet and konks him on the head with it. Putin then staggers around in a daze with a bump on his head and Avery exits the scene laughing. I thought that was easy enough for the program to understand. However, below are several examples of the program delivering what IT thought I wanted. The results speak for themselves.  

AI is straight up cuckoo-bananas! Why would it think I would want any of that? 

Well, hey, this all brings to mind the commentary Brad Bird did for The Incredibles DVD. He basically said that working with CGI in the late '90's and early 2000's was frustrating because the computers wanted to do the exact opposite of what he was trying to do. He was trying to make the look and movement seem as organic as possible but the computer programs of Maya(or SoftImage or whatever program used) kept making things patterned and mechanical. He made it through that struggle. Hopefully I and any others working with AI will get through these similar struggles. Only time will tell.   

Trudeau as a Gerbil

 A bunch of years ago, I did a little drawing of then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a gerbil. That drawing is embedded below:

Neat.  Anyway, just as in my most recent post here, I have been experimenting with AI. The result of that is a 3D and glossed out rendering of this same drawing.

So there we go.  Then, also with AI, I used this drawing to make a small animated scene. It's a depiction of what Justin Trudeau did while in Canada's parliament for the past 10 years.

It's a "fun" little scene that only took me minutes to create, but on the whole I do prefer animating the traditional way.  Even though it takes longer, I like having absolute control of what it looks like, how it moves, and planning the movements right down to the individual frame.  That's how greats like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones worked and that's how I prefer to work too.

From my brief experience, working with AI is like getting an idiot to help move your couch. You just need this couch moved from one end of the room to the other and you think giving him that simple command will get the job done.  But instead he starts shoving that couch out the door, through the wall, he tries to eat it at one point and all you can do is get increasingly flustered shouting "NO NOT THERE!! WATCH OUT FOR THAT........ LAMP!! ARE YOU STUPID?? WHY WOULD I WANT IT IN THE FISH TANK??!! WHERE DID THE CUSHIONS GO??!!" It can get so exhausting. Well, the traditional method can get exhausting too, but at least I'm in much more control.

Oh well, this looks like the future of animation and possibly movies and TV in general. So...... let's do what we can.

A possible new look for the Censor Monkeys..... maybe..... I don't know..... probably not

Anyone who's visited this here blog of mine for any length of time going all the way back to the 2000 "oughts" is most likely familiar with my Censor Monkey characters.  They know their basic routine: a creator makes content then these ferociously disgusting (or disgustingly ferocious) monkeys swoop in to whine and complain about EVERYTHING!!!  Or, as one Dee Snyder described Tipper Gore back in the 80's, "they go looking for something to be outraged about and find it".

One of those monkeys in the pantheon is the Black Panther Monkey, pictured below:

The bug up his ass is that everything is SOOOOOOOOOO RACIST!!!  No matter what the project is, he'll find "racism" to rattle his nervous system one way or another.  The delightful irony (at least delightful to me) is that the real life versions of these Censor Monkeys consider THIS monkey to be "racist" which only solidifies just how much like this monkey they are.  The only way out of that "censor loop" is for them to pull that bug out of their asses and not find it "racist".  Problem solved.

Well, at any rate, it's now the future. Art, animation, and entertainment in general might be taken over by AI.  I'm not entirely a big fan of it either, but at the same time it's not going away anytime soon.  It's a new tool that we'll have to learn to use one way or another.  With that in mind, below is my very first attempt at rendering my Black Panther Monkey in an AI fashion.   That rendering is embedded below:

I imagine the dialogue to be:

Monkey: "THIS WHOLE PRODUCTION IS RACIST! IT RACIALLY PROFILES ALL THE MARGERINIZED RACES! APOLOGIZE AND MAKE A MILLION CHANGES OR I'M SHUTTING YOU DOWN!!!"

Director: "It's just a pudding commercial.

Monkey: "CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE OR MY AK-47 WILL DO THE TALKING!!!"

Anyway, yeah there's still alot of work to be done.  Like I said at the top, this is my very first delve into this emerging AI technology.  We'll all see where this leads together.

 

The angry man is animated

 

Hey, remember that Angry Man drawing I posted a short while ago? Well, the above video is him all animated. Tell me what you think. Does he at the very least come across as angry?

Airplane test

 

Just a bit of airplane animation I did for my upcoming video.  I still have tons of work to do on it.  I can't wait until it's done and I can finally show everybody.

Tex Avery: In His Own Words

 

 

 Recently, some lovely person found an old recording of Tex Avery giving an interview about his life and career.  Apparently, at Chapman College back in 1974, somebody was doing a retrospective showing of animated films and Tex was an invited guest who spoke at it.  That's the year I was born so if I had been there I wouldn't have gotten so much out of that interview.  It would've been great if I was there at the age I am now or even 25 years ago.  Oh well, the best I can do for myself is embed this interview clip on my own blog for what would've been Tex's 117 birthday had modern science managed to avert death in any way.

What perked my ear the most about Tex's speech is what he thought of "modern" cartoons, those being made at about that time.  He's right about how the tight television deadlines as well as the sponsor's imposing opinions put a huge damper on the animation industry as a whole. There was not nearly as much room for creativity as there was for Tex at WB and MGM in the 1930's and 40's.  Things weren't 100% perfect of course, but they were marginally better than the Saturday morning era of the 70's and 80's.

Tex did express a small bit of hope that the industry could improve in the future.  Whether it has improved at all since 1974 is certainly a matter of opinion.  However, I think one thing that Tex might've overlooked in lamenting about the future of animation is the technology. One big reason animation studios couldn't afford full animation at the time was because they were using the same method of animating on paper followed by inking and painting onto cels. The late 80's and all of the 90's had the rise of computers being used which caused animation projects to be completed that much quicker.  That's why at Disney they could finish one fully animated every year instead of every 12 years or so. And, of course, we saw the rise of a small fledgling studio called Pixar which would soon be purchased by Disney and become huge. 

People at Pixar are just as nostalgic for short cartoons in theatres as Tex was. To that end, whenever they released a feature film in theatres they would make room to attach a short animated film before it. Below, I've embedded one such Pixar short. It won an Oscar as I recall. It's also highly comedic and full of gags that Tex Avery may have enjoyed. Maybe some future Pixar employees were at that Chapman film festival back in 1974 and were inspired by Tex's words when they heard them? Mmmmmmmm.......... could be. At any rate, for your viewing pleasure, here is For the Birds. Maybe Tex is looking down on this and smiling? Here's hoping.

Cleaner kitten animation for an upcoming video I'm making

 

The animation for my video is coming along nicely, I'd say.  Remember the kitten animation from my previous blog post?  Well, this is a further cleaned up version of it.  What do you think?

I'd also like to point out that having a kid is quite a time consuming thing.  When my son was still a tiny baby, he could just in his crib or wherever he was comfortable and either just sleep or play.  This gave me some time to dedicate to this video of mine.  However, now he can walk around and get into things.  So, he needs so much more attention now, especially since my wife's maternity leave has ended.  This, as you can imagine, has pretty much reduced the production process to a small trickle.  I'm not sure when this will be done, possibly when my son starts kindergarten.  

But, at any rate, I look forward to the finished product and the reaction it will get.

Kitten animation test for my upcoming video

 

 Up top is some animation of a kitten I just roughed out.  I'll clean it up nice and as polished as the time on my hands can allow me.  As you can imagine, having a full time job AND an infant son can eat up sooooo much of that time.

Hey, speaking of my infant son:

            sx z    

My son was on my lap for a brief time while I was making this blog post.  That "           sx z  " text is the first thing he ever typed.  I enlarged it and changed the colour for emphasis like the proud father I am.  Could this be the start of him typing many profound and thought-provoking things? Only time will tell.

At any rate, please give enjoy and/or give critiques of the above animation.  Thank you.

More footage from my video

 I'm slowly but surely making progress with this video I'm working on.  As you can see by the clip's title, this is Scene 16.  In this video there will be 52 scenes in total stitched together to make one full video.  I can't wait to unleash it onto the world.

Yes, progress has slowed to a crawl because I have a full time job AND my baby son was born.  Both of those take the utmost priority.  Oh well, maybe when this video is done I can make animated videos my new big priority.  It all depends on how this one is received.  But until then.................. 

Some smeary smearness

 Here's a screenshot from that animated video I'm working on.  I figured that it was too crazy NOT to share.  Anyway, there it is for your visual enjoyment or whichever emotion takes you.

I've seen people online decrying smear animation and too wonky and
weird.  People just take a screenshot of it and just focus on that one image pointing out everything they find "wrong" with it.  These are people that are of course 1) not in the animation business 2) have never tried to animate anything in their entire lives.  Therefore they have no inkling of how any of it works.  On the day they finally do acquire that knowledge, they'll find out that the image they once gawked at does indeed work within the movement where it counts. 

This is, of course, something that AI artists could never fully duplicate even with the biggest computer with the highest amount of RAM memory.

Anyway, that's my post and subsequently my rant.  Here's hoping my video, smears and all, is done and online soon.  I can't wait.

lol omg wut

 Last post I put up a small animated segment from something I'm working on.  This time I'd like to share one small image from it.  I can't even believe I drew that.  Yes, it's an in-between and it does work well enough within the movement.  But even still, it's such a twisted bizarre image that I felt the need to share it.

I really can't wait for my project to be done and shared with the world.

Something I'm working on

 This right here is a small cropped out clip of an animation piece I'm working on.  It's not for any big studio, or even a little studio for that matter.  It's just something I feel compelled to do for my own reasons.  I've completed 3 scenes of this video already, only 49 more left to go.  It's lots of work but it's also lots of fun too.  I know for sure that my son will be born by the time it's finished.  I can't wait for him to see it.

I entered a TV show idea into a contest

 

Way back in June of this year (2022), I found a contest online hosted by the Ottawa International Animation Festival or OIAF for short.  The contest was for people to send in their ideas for an animated tv show series idea.  Only the best of the best of those ideas of course.  The deadline for submission was June 30, which I made with a few days to spare.  I had completely forgotten about this until somewhat recently.  That's why I'm posting about this waaaaaaay into December.

Anyway, here's what the criteria was for entry:

That's pretty straight forward.

It doesn't say so in that screen grab of the contest details, but I saw on their website that the winner would be chosen on September 23rd, most likely during the festival.

Well, September 23rd came and went with no contact from the festival in any way.  I'm guessing my idea didn't make the cut.  But, I am wondering how much "in the running" my idea was.  Could it have been a contender, or was it dismissed outright upon the first reading?  I have no way of knowing.

So, in an effort to gage how this entry of mine might have fared in that contest, I decided to post it up here on my little blog.  The reaction either in the comments section here or from any other social media platform I post this on should give me a pretty good notion of my shows performance under scrutiny.  With that, here's what I pitched:

Bears That Give a Shit or Whatever

As you can probably guess, this show is supposed to be a blistering send up as well as a complete 180 reversal of the Care Bears.  These are bears that most definitely do NOT care.  That one bear up there is named "Tender Dick Bear"........... because the "leader" bear of the original show is named "Tender Heart Bear"....... so now you know.  I won't explain the tummy symbol on that bear.  If you look close enough you can see what it is.  Oh yeah and also, if you're looking at him and asking yourself "what is up with that bear's freaky looking nose?"  Well, you see, the original Care Bears had little valentine hearts for noses.  So, my bears have actual beating mammal hearts for noses.  That's what that is.  Every bear's nose would have that pulsating KA-THUMP KA-THUMP KA-THUMP heart beating on their face at all times.

"What's the show's basic structure?", you ask.  "How could one go about conceiving of and writing episodes for such a show?", you also inquire.  Well, I'll just post what I intend to have as the show's opening narration.  It pretty much sets up who these bears are and why they've been brought together to do what they do.  It's posted immediately below.  To get the full effect, read it in Bill Burr's voice.  I would love it if I could get him signed on to be the voice of Tender Dick Bear.  Here it is:

Longline: A group of selfish dysfunctional idiots must, by law, do good deeds for others much to their revulsion.

Synopsis (as told by the lead character):

“Ok, maybe you remember some time ago that there were these bears that… I don’t know… did good deeds or some shit.  Yeah, they… fucking lived in the clouds and came to Earth to help people.  And they were all fucking sunshine and rainbows and ‘la la la’ all over the fucking place.  What were they called? Benevolent Bruins or some shit?  Whatever!  They’re fucking gone now.

But yeah, back then everybody thought that every fucking bear was like that… all happy and helpful with those shitty little fucking pictures on their guts.  NO!  Most bears were just ordinary nothing bears just living their lives and doing their own bullshit.

And THEN there’s us!  Holy fuck are we a bunch of fucking dicks.  Well, I’m not… well ok yah a bit… but not as much as those fucking guys.  One night we’re at this dive bar and it’s crowded ‘cause there’s a game on or some shit.  My bud had waaaaay too much to drink and then he starts getting into it with this guy and his girlfriend.  Bud might’ve grabbed her ass or some shit but I don’t remember.  I was pretty fucking wasted too.  Anyway, next thing I know, I’m trying to pull my bud off this guy.  The girlfriend starts kicking his balls.  So then the rest of my buds start beating on her, then her buds start beating on us.

It’s not long that we’re all piled in to the fucking paddy wagon and taken to the police station.  Everybody hauled in that day had done jail time before so we were all yeah fuck that shit.  I can only avoid a fucking shiv for so long.  So yeah, we all agreed to do community service instead.  But you know what community service they have us fucking doing??!!  It’s all the stuff those other bears did.  Yeah!  We gotta live on those stupid fucking clouds and go help people and shit.  Our parole officer is a little asshole too.  We hate him.  He hates us.  What-fucking-ever!

So that’s where we are.  We were all given our names and fucking gut pictures based on who we are and what we like to do.  I’m Tender Dick Bear.  I’m called that because I’ve had so much raw dogging sex with so many chicks that my fucking dick is too sensitive.  Getting an erection actually hurts like FUCK!!!  But enough about me.  Over there is Lazy Ass Bear, Dirty Slut Bear, Porn Addict Bear… um… what the fuck’s his name?  Oh yeah, it’s Hack a Lung Bear.  That fat fuck over there is Fat Fuck Bear.  Then there’s Never Bathe Bear, Gambling Bear, Brawling Bear, Dumb Ass Bear, Junkie Bear… and over there is Bare Bear.  He’s always naked and it’s fucking disgusting.  There’s a bunch of other bears here with other dumb shit names like that.  I’d be here all fucking day if I listed them all.  But yeah, you’ll probably see those bears at some point when we help some dumbass on Earth.

Altogether, we’re called the… um… Bears That Give a Shit or Whatever.

Of course we’re only doing this until some asshole judge says we’ve… like… paid our debt to fucking society or some bullshit.  The exact… like… micro-second that’s done we are soooooo fucking outta here.  But until then, yeah, watch for us in your neighbourhood helping out some snivelling little shit.

Okay, that’s enough right?  Everybody knows the premise now?  There are no fucking dumbasses out there like ‘duuuuuuuh what’s going on?’  Maybe a couple?  Aw fuckit!  I’m done.”

That's the basic gist of it.  It is now the internet's turn to give opinions about this project.  Could it fly or would it crash and burn?  Would you watch it or recommend to for someone else to watch it?  I anticipate the feedback no matter what it is.

I experimented with lip sync

 

 Above is some lip sync animation I just did as an experiment.  I took an old dialogue file that I used for this "series of videos" (which was really just one very long video) some time ago.  The main reasons I did this is be because I both wanted to see if I still "have what it takes" but also see what my current technology could help me accomplish.

Doing this lip sync was harder than it should have been.  I did finally manage to import the sound file into the Adobe Flash program ut for some reason I couldn't set it to what's called "stream" for the purpose of going over the dialogue frame by frame so as to insure accuracy.  So, what I had to do was put that dialogue file into iMovie and "stream" the dialogue there.  One shouldn't have to go back and forth between programs to complete a simple task like lip sync, but it's what I had to do.

So, anyway, here's my lip sync such as it is.  What are your thoughts?

THEY'RE FINALLY HERE

Back in December of 2016, I got married to a wonderful Filipina named Janet and in the process adopted her equally wonderful daughter Raianne.  I blogged about it at the time here.  However, that ceremony took place in the Philippines because she's a Philippines citizen.  So after that wedding, I had to leave her behind and fly back to Canada to simply carry on with my life.  She and Raianne had to do the same thing with their lives as well.  Long distance relationships never feel good.  Sending and receiving messages to each other online is certainly fun and lifts the spirits, but there's still an emptiness felt throughout simply because this person is so far away.
But, in that time since then, we all completed the necessary paperwork for my wife and daughter to achieve permission to immigrate to Canada to be with me.  This passed January, they were both accepted!!! They were both sad to leave friends and family behind, but at the same time they were also excited to meet the new family and friends that awaited them in Canada.  April 8, one both ago today, was the big day when they finally made the journey.  My wife documented their trip in this video:



 Lots has happened in the first month since they've arrived.  Yes, they've both applied for things that every Canadian citizen needs like SIN numbers and health cards.  Our daughter has also been enrolled in school and is already doing quite well.

Here she is getting a guided tour of the school by some of her new friends.

But it's not just been laboriously filling out forms or listening to stuffy seminars about citizenship.  We've managed to have some fun too.  We went to the Saskatchewan Natural History Museum where Raianne got to look at some real dinosaur bones.

I know that she's interested in science, especially dinosaurs, so I knew this would be a big treat for her.  With that in mind, we also went to the Science Centre.  Raianne enjoyed herself there too.  We watched an IMAX movie about rescue dogs that was quite enjoyable and informative.
However, there was one attraction there that I had particular interest in.  There's something at the Science Centre called a 'zoetrope'.  For those who don't know, that's the device that was used to view animated drawing and/or photographs before film was invented.  Patrons can make their own animations on a slip of paper, put it into the device, then give it a spin and watch it move.  I tried creating what's known in animation circles as a 'walk cycle'.  I brought it home, scanned it into my computer ad put those pictures into Flash so that I could show you fine people on the vast internet my meagre accomplishment.  Here it is embedded below:



On April 28, there was a freak spring snow storm that made it look and feel like winter for just that one day.  Most people from hot climates like the Philippines tend not function well right away in snowy conditions.  They either try to stay inside as much as possible, or they just shiver profusely no matter how many layers of jackets and sweaters they're wearing.  Raianne however took to it naturally.  She sang Elsa's "Let It Go" song the entire time and could've frolicked in that snow all day.  I showed her how to make a snow angel and she did that many times.  Also, at one point she taught herself how to make snow balls and throw them.  One of those snow balls hit me right in the face.  She said "sorry, daddy" but I wasn't mad at all.  If anything I was proud.  In just a short time, she taught herself to throw snowballs at people's faces like a Canadian pro.  That's impressive.  The next snow fall won't be for several months, but I'm sure she will not have forgotten her newfound skills by then.  So look out anyone who's within throwing distance of my daughter next winter.  Your face might be getting cold and wet very quickly.

Oh yes, Raianne is having fun with her new family members as well as you can see.

It's not just the cousins close to her own age she's having fun with.  She enjoys spending time with her new grandmother too.  While we were playing cribbage together, Raianne drew this picture of grandma (who insists on being called 'babchi').

She loves to draw and draws often.  It shouldn't be hard to steer her in an artistic direction.

"Yes, we know your daughter is having fun.  But what about you and your wife??"

'What are I and my wife doing for fun since her arrival into Canada' you ask oh hypothetical person that I've concocted just for this blogpost.  Well, I won't post any grizzly details.  I'll just leave this here.



Skyrockets in flight indeed.

So anyway, that's been their first month in Canada.  I know there will be many many more great months and years to come.  I'll end this post with another of my wife's videos showing her and our daughter having fun in Rochdale Park.  Enjoy!

Joe Prick

There's a new show on the inter webs called Joe Prick. I just embedded it's first episode in this blog post above.  It's some pretty funny stoner humour that I'm sure everybody's burnt out relative will love.  I did some fan art of Joe Prick himself just for the shits and giggles of it.

If you support this production and give Episode 1 lots of traffic, I'm sure many more episodes will follow.  If you have a problem with that then you're the equivalent of making love while Forrest Gump is standing right beside you: you're fucking close to stupid!

"Well now! That was uncalled for!"

Perhaps.  Whatever.  Just feel free to enjoy the show.

The Great Gazoo

Here's some animation of the Great Gazoo that I just did today.

I animated another comedian

Last month I put a comedian's joke to animation.  Today I've done it again.  The comedian I chose this time is the great Robin Willaims:



I wrote a very lengthy post about his untimely passing on my sister blog here.  Watch this video then go read that article to remember what an amazing human being he was.

I animated a comedian

Here's some animation I just finished.  I basically took one of Sarah Silverman's jokes and made a little vignette out of it.  I hope you enjoy it.  Although I should advise that this is most likely NOT SAFE FOR WORK.  (Well it depends where you work I guess).