Hello,
I've just finished a new animation and I thought I'd post it here to see what people thought of it. It's a re-working of one of my shoot the writers entries from 2005.
Warning: Plenty of rude words for those at work.
The History Team
Hi Mr Pie - I usually do my forum reading / posting during working hours (pretty much coz it's much more fun that working) - so don't really get a chance to see animations etc - thought I would give it my time while I am on back at the house. Some nice animations mate - must take you a bit of time to get all that done and synchronised I guess (as you can probably tell..and I'm quoting your bearded archaeologist here...I know "fakk awl" about animation).
Keep up the good work and apologies for only getting round to it now - this particular one did make me chuckle. I wish they would throw Tony a.k.a. Baldrick in one of those pits and leave him to be excavated in a few hundred years (is it just me or is that guy actually gay?).
Cheers,
Andy
Thanks for taking a look Andy! I appreciate it. I do most of my browsing at work too.
It's good to hear someone else likes them!! After all the disappointing 1 and 2 stars on comedy soup!!! They take a bit of time to make, probably about 10 hours in total. Spread over a week or two. But it's good fun.
I think my next one will stop-motion with some green-screen action going on just to try something different. And it gives me time to practice my animation in the meantime.
Thanks
The Pie
Keep at it mate - if you enjoy making them then that is half the battle and I look forward to viewing any future ones that stretch your boundaries a bit on the animation front. I guess if you were able to do some much shorter sketches with a huge pay-off not only would it be much easier to animate due to timescales but would give the viewer a very visual joke that we can't get from the written word. Using your animation talents you are able to do certain things us non-animators can't so should take full advantage of it - eg jokes with talking animals and if they are 'short and sharp' would keep 'regulars' wanting to see more. Nothing wrong with long sketches mate - just more pressure to keep them full of good rib-ticklers to keep the viewer interested.
Anyway, enough of my drivel and keep up the good work
Cheers,
Andy
I enjoyed it too Pie Man. The fat bearded chap seems familiar - might be the brother of a character from captain pugwash, the simpsons, david bellamy, can't quite put my finger on it. I'll be doing some stop moing this week end. Out of interest, are you doing any lip synching? Using premiere or something else? I'll give you a shout over the week end. yes, lucky you
I thought it was good ShoePie - it made soup's Current Pick so they had to think it was good too. The voting on there is very partisan so don't get disheartened. We had a sketch doing really well until they made it the Current Pick, then the 1's came rolling in big time. 
It's easy to see when a sketch has been 'frigged' - it has an unusually high number of 5 stars or 1 stars. An example of a 5 star frig was a sketch, beautifully made, but obviously an excerpt from a longer film. Within a day it picked up 35 of the 5 stars there were no fours no threes, a few twos and about ten 1s. If a sketch has picked up a lot of mid ground stars then you can be sure that the votes are pretty genuine for it.
Andy, as part of the Time Trumpet competition on Comedy Soup we did a sketch uncannily like the one you suggested. Tony Robinson is indeed dug up by the new Time Team. It sits here on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaUHiLohG_I
Thanks for the comments. Good idea about the shorter more visual gags Andy. Because I want to be a writer more than an animator my material is written for actors so it can look very slow compared to other fast-paced animations. I guess I need to tailor my writing style for animation better.
I'm not sure about Comedy Soup. I've seen some good sketches get high ratings so I know that if something is good then it will do well. but then 'History team' was comedy pick on soup and 4laughs so the editors liked it. A puzzling situation. And I have no real measure of it's funniness any more after working on them for 2/3 weeks. The surprise has gone.
I never saw the 35 1 stars sketch. How blatant!
Lip-Synching: Moho (lostmarble.com) has a built in lip-syncher which uses the volume of the audio track to decide how wide to make their mouths. Then I manually add any 'oh' shapes because they are more noticeable. Basic but it works ok for now.
Character: I think he looks like the dwarf from LOTR. Definitely some David Bellamy beard influence and a smidge of wurzels.
Pie
That was great, I laughed at the Colin character before he even spoke.
Brilliant!
Quote: SlagA @ March 2, 2007, 2:28 PMAndy, as part of the Time Trumpet competition on Comedy Soup we did a sketch uncannily like the one you suggested. Tony Robinson is indeed dug up by the new Time Team. It sits here on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaUHiLohG_I
Nice sketch SlagA - it is indeed uncannily like my post earlier in this thread - great minds think alike then!
Andy
P.S. Can't believe you managed to squeeze in a "this one's 'armless" gag when describing a Tank Top - you should be ashamed of yourselves! 
Hello Mr Pie
I liked this and it is a testament to the correct use of the "F" word.
Not gratuitous or blatant at all.
Just f**king funny!
Sound work
Loved the finally few lines very good. It's brilliant to see something moving instead of just reading the words very good stuff Mines stuff is in pre-production and will be up soon 
Keep up good work mate
Hehe Thanks Blenkinsop. I try not to use them too much but a well timed F-Bomb can have devastating effects!
I look forward to seeing your work Gavin. It's definitely worth having some way of getting your writing out there in front of people instead of hidden away on a hard drive.
Hi Shoepie. As usual, I really like it. Call me childish but the bit where the little guy smiles really ctacked me up. I'd like to see you realy crank up the silliness of the voices and stick with accents that you feel comfortable with. The presenter's voice was spot on but the other one had a wandering accent. I always look forward to the next one -I think you could really gather a cult following with these. I'm a fan. http://fredpeters.podbean.com/
Hi Shoepie, I liked it a lot. I'm essentially quite boring and am interested in the software and harware you used to make it. If you don't want to look as much as a geek as me, you could PM me with the info when you have 5 min. Cheers, and keep up the good work.
Thanks. I'm long past caring how much of a geek I look!
My hardware is nothing special, a 2 year old PC and Camcorder. I use Moho (now called Anime Stuudio) www.lostmarble.com to do all the animation. It's specifically designed for flash style character animation.
And I use my camcorder to record the audio. And various free converters such as MMConvert to extract WAV files from the Avi.
Thanks Fred. The voices were done by a couple of friends and a four pack of beer. They were recorded over several takes and chopped together which might explain the wandering accents....i.e. more drunk!!