PICTURE PREVIEW: Clone CHAOS!!!

YO!!! Haha, OK, so I haven't posted an animation update in a while! Obviously, if you've followed me closely, you know that's because I've been primarily working for Mashed in that time. Well, now that PART 2 of that Mashed video is on its way, I'm actually able to share a few non-spoilery sneak peeks of it!

Right now, I'm working on the animatic. It's about halfway done right now. The way it works is I get sent a VO edit of the whole video (about 4.5 minutes) and then I draw all these storyboard images to accompany said audio. I think it might be my favorite part of the process, just because I get to play it a little loose and figure out all the fun poses and faces I wanna do. There's a lot of room to introduce additional visual gags that I hadn't thought of when writing. Here's some boards from the first part, too!

You can compare these to the final video on YouTube to get an idea of how much the animatic boards drive the animation. You know, in case you didn't notice, those last two boards were drawings I did, but the finished animation wasn't by me! Esau A. Munoz, or "LDranzer," handled the last minute of PT1. Honestly, he did a really good job at matching my style while also making sure the drawings looked more "finished" and that it was all really fluid. He was instrumental to getting that video out on time, so we'll probably use his help more in PT2 just to make sure you all don't have to wait half a year to see how this all ends.

It's definitely been a learning experience working on these vids for Mashed, getting a little bit of a taste on how fast-paced things can move in this industry made of such time-consuming work. I'm very lucky that I got to work with such a supportive and flexible team. I hope this influences my work ethic for the better moving forward.. It's funny, if you're wondering a bit on how this whole pipeline works, I finished that first part like two or three days before the video went public. I hadn't started on the second part at all. The channel had a publishing deadline they had to meet, which was something I have never really had to deal with. All my deadlines are self-imposed and there's basically no real threatening pressure to meet them, but Mashed is own by like a legit broadcasting company or something. So there's forces greater than all of us that we must heed to. Groovy.

I'll probably talk more on the production of PT1 at some later point, whether on here or my public accounts. Lemme tell you, figuring out the design of that big hydra snake monster thing was a lot of pressure. I'll probably make a post on here later going into the process of that; probably after PT2 releases. For spoiler reasons. I can't say more.

Oh, yeah! What the heck is Tails wearing here?

Clearly it's some kind of ringmaster or carnival getup. Hmmm!! Well, leave your theories below, I guess! All I can say is that it's honestly really adorable. I think there was a character in Sonic Boom that dressed like this but I couldn't actually find a reference image of them because I forgot what episode they were from. I guess you can just know it was a reference in spirit, at least, if you even know what Boom character I'm talking about.

I think I've rambled on enough for now, though. Hopefully this was a sufficient enough preview for things to come, as well as a fun insight on the process of the previous part. If you're curious about any part of the process, whether it's about the writing process, how we brought the backgrounds together, how it was working with another animator, or how I even got approached by Mashed in the first place, then feel free to leave comments prodding me on any particular subject so I know what to post about next.

I'll definitely make more blog-style posts on the behind-the-scenes, so I'd love to know what parts of that really interest you!