Last Post of 2020

Oh boy, what a year huh

No seriously, what a year huh

Merry Christmas 2020!

Hey hey hey! We made it to Christmas! What an achievement!

The coronavirus can't cancel this holiday!

To ring in some holiday cheer, I drew up some colorful Christmas art, as per usual!

I was barely about to finish this artwork just in time to post this for Christmas. Just barely!

Hope you guys rest easy with family and friends today!

Merry Christmas everyone!

November Animation Practice - Magic Malfunction

Wow! I feel like I'm super mega hella late with this one! And I am!

I went through a bad art block during November and in early December. Because of that, I literally had zero drive and motivation to animate. I was incredibly frustrated with early versions of this animation and completely started over on it twice.

Hell, even before the art block I had zero ideas on what to do for November's animation!

The process for November's animation was a bit of a wild ride, but I finally finished it!

Autumn returns for November, trying to get the hang of using a more powerful magic wand.

(Right click on the video and loop it for a better effect)

She's got much to learn if she ever wants to become a more powerful witch.

Normally, I try to finish last month's animation before the 20th of next month and start a new animation on the 20th (i.e. finishing November's animation before December 20th, then starting December's animation on the 20th), but with the many issues that rose during November, I wasn't quite able to hit my marks and deadlines.

Oh well, at least it's done! And I like the end result too!

Now I have less than four days to start and finish this year's Christmas art! Oh dear oh my!

October Animation Practice - Pumpkin Haircut

I'm back with October's animation practice!

In this short bit, a pumpkin meets with a barber. I wonder what kind of stylish cut he will get? This time around, my voice acting makes an appearance.

Besides the fun joke that plays out here, I wanted this month's animation to look like an animated comic strip, complete with word bubbles and everything. Right from the start, I gave myself the non-serious challenge of completing this animation in less than a week; I started this one a few days before Halloween, so I was aiming for a completion date of either October 31st or November 1st/2nd.

Obviously I never hit those dates as I finished this on the 11th.

Going back on this looking like an animated comic strip, I drew it out initially as a rough comic strip (or a storyboard) to have a base for the pumpkin designs and how it would play out. Here's that rough strip:

I had a completely different idea for October's animation, but I feel like that idea would bring the animation to be about 30 seconds to about a minute long. Anything at that length would be qualified to be posted on my YouTube (which I promise I'll update with a new video whenever I get the idea/chance.)

As a matter of fact, I'm still unsure if I should post these animation practices on the Doji Pocket YouTube channel. Maybe as a compilation? I dunno yet.

I currently have no idea what to do for November's animation. Guess we'll see what I come up with next month!

More Autumn the Witch Sketches

How can I not post more sketches of Autumn the Witch during the autumn season?

I'm really digging this new character if that's not apparent by now. It's nice to go back to drawing in a cartoon style that resembles my very early art. I definitely want to continue exploring (or re-exploring) that very simple toon style.

In other thoughts, I should really give more attention to the Mr. Ridiculous and Fasty's characters though; it's time I finalize their character designs and give them a proper line up.

Happy Halloween 2020!

Halloween is back! You can't beat the chilly autumn weather, fun spoops, and free candy!

Well actually, is Halloween cancelled this year due to that darn coronavirus? I don't know, but it's not stopping me from making another Halloween-themed art piece this year!

So for these past few years, I would alternate between Marilyn in a witch costume and the Sally/Mandy duo for Halloween. This year calls for Mary, however the new witch character I created not too long ago seems like the perfect fit for the Halloween art this year (and her name is Autumn too! Very fitting for the season!)

I drew up two different Halloween drawings, one featuring Mary and the other with Autumn. After getting feedback for the two ideas, it appears that Autumn the witch is taking center stage for the Halloween art this year!

You gotta have some fun as a witch during Halloween night! You just gotta!

Regarding the Marilyn version of the Halloween 2020 art, I'll recycle that for a different occasion down the road. Maybe. Not sure yet. I've been told it can serve as a PSA kind of image since the idea with her relates to the virus thing happening currently. Anyways...

Happy Halloween everyone!

September Animation Practice - Wet Floor

Hey! Another month went by which means another animation practice!

I was originally going to post this yesterday but I completely forgot.

And even then, I added a light background artwork in the animation several minutes ago.

Things have been really stressful lately, so it was nice to create and enjoy the end result of this funny little animation. It's nice to give life to characters that hardly get that treatment.

I'm still not sure of what her name should be. I have an idea, but I won't say it yet just in case the idea changes.

Blog Update: Topics and Labels

Hey! Here's a neat update regarding the blog.

After almost eight years and over 500 posts later, I've made the very late decision to add labels on almost every single post! They sort of act like hashtags; you can click on a label at the bottom of a post and it takes you to a page with all other posts that are linked/related to the same topic.

One reason I decided to do this is for the ease of finding old drawings, concepts, ideas, and whatnot relating to my current story projects. Who knows? Maybe one day one of these ideas will finally turn into a popular show or something and one can go back in and literally see the progression and development of said show/idea.

It's also nice for me to go back in and find older content whenever I feel like seeing my own growth/change for myself and these ideas, sort of like a time capsule.

Now notice I said almost every single post has been labeled. A lot of older posts (especially between 2013-2015/16) are more on school assignments, personal life updates, small rants and ramblings, and sharing outside content. Those posts have not been categorized, but I'm planning on going back and creating labels for those particular posts; for now, I mainly wanted to focus on posts relating to drawings, sketches, animation, and story ideas that I'm actively working on.

I'm glad I decided to do it now so I can label old posts that were about Propinquity and Class of 2422 before they became the more developed version of Propinquity and Class of 2422 that they are today!

On desktop (and mobile I think) you can find the list of topics and labels under "The Blogthor" bit on the right side of the home page. Hope this'll keep posts more organized for the future!

August Animation Practice - August Heat

I know, I know, I finished this one really late. I hated the fact that this one took waaaaaay too long than normal to finish, but it went through a lot of revisions to get the movements right.

I hope it paid off.

(Be sure to right click on the video and set it to loop since it's, well, a looping animation)

Normally I take a break for about a week or two and then start on the next animation, however this might be a back-to-back kind of situation. September's animation will definitely be a more simpler one to do (I hope.)

Do I like the end result for this one? Kinda, yeah. I tried to rush it in the process just to finally finish this one. I especially like how the melting animation turned out at least.

In case you don't live in California, things have been really hot these past few weeks. We're in mid September currently and the weather has kinda gotten better? I say kinda because we're currently going through our 23,572,357,264,848,234,681,786,908,135th forest fire right now.

Originally I was gonna use Danielle for this animation, but since the whole melting thing is very silly and Mr. Ridiculous is a silly character, it just seemed like a better match.

Stay cool everyone!

July Animation Practice - Biking Witch

Glad you all are comfortable with Autumn from the last post because she's the center point for July's animation!

(Be sure to right click on the video and set it to loop after playing the video.)

I wanted to do a simple loop for July, but didn't know of what at the time. Luckily, this character's creation came at the right time to give me a good idea for a loop. I thought animating a character riding a bike on loop would be pretty easy, but of course from someone who hasn't animated a bike rider before, it was more complicated than I thought.

I like the end result though! I had to do a minor edit before posting because the background scroll in the first version of the animation was too fast so I had to slow it down so it looked a bit more natural.

Overall, good to see this new character get the animation treatment so quickly after creation!

New Character/Style Sketches - Autumn the Witch

For the longest time, I've wanted to expand the kinds of styles I draw in. Some of those experimentation in style have been kind of apparent in some one-off drawings I've posted before, like some of the birthday drawings I've posted for the last few years.

Keep in mind that the way I draw my characters for "Propinquity" and "Class of 2422" is the way that I have always been drawing my cartoons for many, many years; it also doesn't help that I've only been drawing those specific set of characters for the longest time as well.

Of course, I do have some characters outside of those sets that I've created that are visually different, like with the "Mr. Ridiculous" story project, but I'm still hungry to expand my horizon in my personal projects when it comes to character design, visual style, or storytelling.

It might be too early to reveal this one, but I wanted to share what I've been working on lately since this character is featured in July's animation practice (which will be posted tomorrow.)

Meet Autumn the witch!

Here's some progress sketches I've done of the character. Initially I explored different styles that I like from different artists until I reverted to a simpler style that has more of a resemblance to how I used to draw when I was younger; this style is almost like a throwback.

Of course, since this is pretty early in this new story project's development, some things might change or evolve the more I work on this, but I really enjoy the direction this is going in so far.

June Animation Practice - Android Repair

Hey, I got this one done with decent timing! We're still in the first week of July!

After looking through my list of characters I haven't animated yet, I initially decided to take care of two of them at once: Kate and Kevin. However, the two are from different story series and it wouldn't make much sense to mix the two right now (even thought they both take place in the same universe), so I replaced Kevin with Robert.

I've animated Robert before, in case anyone forgot that.

Despite advancements in A.I. and technology in the future, androids still need human assistance for repairs. Robert's always open to help Kate out, and the results are shocking

This one took me about a week to complete. I really wanted to finish this quickly so I sort of rushed the rough animation for this one. I totally paid the price for that since it was more difficult to do the final line work, with unadjusted timing for certain movements and placements of certain elements being off after refinement.

I like how it came out! I really try to make time to do the final line work and color for these animations since the end result looks like completed animation for television.

Speaking of which, I've thought about using one of these months to go back on an old monthly animation to either redo it or to fully complete it. Not sure if it's a good idea to do so, but we'll see. After all, we have have six more months left for 2020!

Another Frame, Another Birthday!

It's that day again!

That's a lotta frames!

May Animation Practice - Mandy's Makeover

What a month! Good thing I've got something to help take a load off from the craziness!

I have yet another month of animation practice to present here!

Best friends don't try to change each other, a lesson Sally was happy to learn:

After the weirdness of trying to adjust to Toonboom from April's animation, I had the original intention to post May's animation in a rough, unfinished-looking state.

Once completed however, I figured what I had was pretty good enough to give it a polish, so I spent another extra week with clean-up and coloring. And plus, with having that finished animation of Danny and Daisy back in January, I've been wanting to do another piece of TV-ready-looking kind of animation!

I also realized early on that this is my first time animating Sally; it's so great to finally give her proper life and movement!

All in all, I really like the end result of this one! I think I'm slowly getting the hang of using Toonboom.

April Animation Practice - Bank Blast

Hey! Man, Blogger really changed behind the scenes. It's weird as hell.

Anyways! I held out on posting April's animation because I wanted to finish the clean line version, but with some school stuff getting in the away, general Toonboom-acting-stupid nonsense, and the time it's gonna take to actually finish the final version, I decided the cut my loses and post the animation as is.

Still not too bad for it being half completed!

I'm still in that stage of getting the hang of Toonboom so I've been having issues with the program, but I think I have to keep chugging along and continue using the program, no matter how much painful it can be.

Doing an animation this long was probably a bit too ambitious in the early stages of using a program like this for the first time, so I'm gonna try to dial it back in terms of length in the future. Keep word: "try."

Then again, that rotoscoping animation was also pretty ambitious, so who knows? It's already mid May, so I have to definitely scale back in length to get something done on time.

A New Addition for Class of 2422: Aika Koizumi

Remember I made a post awhile ago saying how crazy it would be if I added a new character to the main cast of Class of 2422 this late into its development?

Well crazy's here!

Just when I thought that I had the main cast totally finished and set in stone, we have a new character to introduce! Meet Aika Koizumi (小泉 愛佳), a Japanese student that transferred to Codik High School in an exchange program for her final year of study.

Her creation comes from a place of necessity. Even though the main characters are Robert and Marilyn, I came to the realization that because the supporting characters are mostly relationship-oriented with Robert, Class of 2422's story is primarily Robert's story.
Of course, the supporting characters also have relationships with Marilyn, but not in a strong sense as with Robert. I realized that I didn't have a character that was tailored for Marilyn, so from that void I created Aika. I wanted Marilyn to have a friend she can hang out with and talk to about her interests and bring out Marilyn's personality; she needed a good gal pal that's not mixed up with the main "will they, won't they" story.

Why make the new character Japanese?

October 2019 Animation Practice - Jack

YOOOOOOOO WHY DIDN'T NO ONE TELL ME I FORGOT TO POST OCTOBER'S ANIMATION FROM LAST YEAR AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

For October's animation, I wanted to do something a bit spoopy with a splash of humor, and with a jack-o-lantern somewhere in there for good measure.
My voice-acting returns in this one!

It was a funny idea of "what if a jack-o-lantern came to life" sort of situation. I wanted to add color, but I was out of October at the time. I like how this one came out.
This animation is almost long enough to be posted for the Doji Pocket channel for content! Man, I miss making stuff to post to the official channel. One day, I'll have something new to post! I swears!

I can't believe I totally forgot to post this one on the blog! Good thing I was scrolling through past posts out of boredom; that's when I spotted the gap between September and November!

March Animation Practice - Rotoscope on Me

Hey! Sorry I'm late with this one! With the long tedious rotoscoping process and the coronavirus stuff kicking in mid March, this animation process was slowed down a bit.

But it's finally done! Thank goodness! It was such a slow-moving process, but I think the end result is worth it. See for yourself! (Oh, and enjoy that rare cameo of me in the animation!)

It's no secret that A-Ha's "Take On Me" music video was a huge influence on this one. I recently re-watched the video after not watching it for the longest time, and of course I always come out really impressed by it.
During the month of February, the idea of trying out rotoscoping was something that kept bugging me. Once March rolled around, I started on it as soon as I can since I knew it would take a while to complete. It was kind of a good time to start since the music video recently hit one billion views, so this was a nice way to honor such a popular video.

Hopefully, this will be the last time you guys see my irl hairy grizzly face.

Rac n' Cat

So with this whole "coronavirus" nonsense happening, my classes moved online and I've been stuck inside for the past few weeks. From this situation, I got an idea for a short comic strip.

I haven't drawn one up in forever, so I was excited to start one and was glad with the end result

Will this be a one off thing? I don't know yet; drawing a cat and raccoon character was pretty fun, so maybe.
I would like to do more comic stuff in general, so I hope I'll get around to that one day.

February Animation Practice - Fight Scene

One day, I realized I've never animated an action/fight scene. So I decided to change that!

Usually, I start my animation practices later in the month, but this time I started earlier in order to try and reach a more polished state for publication.
Apparently, animating an action scene takes waaaaay longer than I thought so what I have here is the animation in its first rough pass.

Normally I do a rough pass, then I do a slightly cleaner rough pass to further define the art/animation, and then I go in and do the final clean line art and maybe color if I have the time. It feels kinda weird posting an animation in its initial rough pass, but the goal here is to post whatever I have done by the end of the month. That's the contract I gave myself!

Even though it's in a rough state, I kinda like how it came out! I was considering adding music over the scene, but decided against it.
Oh, and be sure to full screen the video when you see it! It was animated in a 21:9 ultra widescreen aspect ratio so it looks really killer!

January Animation Practice - Walk Jam

Initally, I was thinking of whether or not I should continue my monthly animation practice since the goal was to keep that up for just a year, but I figured that it's in my best interest to keep up my animation groove. Plus, animating is fun and it's what I like to do.

I'm really happy with how well this one came out! I really love it!

I couldn't stop rewatching it after its completion. It almost looks like TV animation quality to me! Plus, it's really nice to see my female characters animated and moving around for a change!

Happy Heart Day 2020

Once I realized my last Valentine's Day drawing was from 2018 and the one before that was 2016, I just knew I had to do one for 2020 to keep up with this pattern.

It's a quick one since it was started and finished today, but I think it's a good one

I wanted to feature Robert and Marilyn for this year's Valentine, but the last two ones focused on these two, so I wanted to keep up the pattern again.

Next Valentine's Day drawing coming in 2022.

December 2019 Animation Practice - Santa's New Year Resolution

Hey! Whoa! It's February 2020 and it appears that I haven't posted my animation practice for December 2019? Shame on me! SHAME SHAME SHAME.

Welp! Here it is! Late as hell!

I started on this one really late (like in January 2020); I took it a little too easy during December, but it was the holidays! It's good to relax sometimes, ya know!

I knew I wanted to do something Christmas themed, but had no idea how to execute it. With New Years coming up at the time, I decided to combine the two holidays and come up with a looping animation of Santa Claus working on his weight loss New Year resolution.

Currently, I'm finishing up my animation practice for January 2020 so I hope I'll be able to post that soon! It's coming out really well; I can't wait to share it once it's done!

Happy New Year 2020!

The ball dropped and now 2020 is here!

Happy New Year everyone!

Also, somebody's gonna have to pay this electricity bill and it ain't gonna be me.