Fester + Space Goose Crew

Quick doodles of Fester and the crew from Space Goose. First Mate Ugly and Dr. Donkey probably shouldn't be overlapping like that-- It looks like Dr. Donkey is riding Ugly's head.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the Space Goose cartoons, they're still on my Youtube channel (here's the first one). They're a bit over-written and the animation is wonky, but they were fun to make and I learned a lot doing them. I miss doing the back-and-forth interactions between the characters in this series. It's hard to do much of that with Fester because he's so dumb.

More delays

Well, suffice to say I've run into another delay. The exported video I mentioned in the previous post didn't turn out well, and Premiere has stopped working due to a weird codec I tried to use. Again, the cartoon itself has been finished for a few days; all these delays are just in trying to get a reasonably high-quality video file.

I'm thinking of buying Adobe Premiere Elements 8, to replace the old 6.0 version I have. It's very affordable, and seems to have all the features I want. It also seems to have more exporting options, which is exactly what I need. Even if my older copy of Premiere hadn't stopped working, I'd pretty much run out of things to try with it. Every video codec I've tried so far has either resulted in horrible quality or an unusably large file (I think Youtube has a 1GB limit, which should be more than enough for such a short cartoon). With the Space Goose cartoons I've used the DivX format, and that seemed to work fine for them, but for some reason when I use DivX on this cartoon, it looks atrocious.

Anyway, sorry that I'm getting into such boring technical detail. The cartoon should be uploaded any day now. It's 5 minutes and 2 seconds long, which I'm relieved about. I was worried it might end up being seven or eight minutes, which is too long for such a simple story.

Last night "Fugitive Goose" was screened at the Revue (thanks for coming, Zoran, Lee, Leah, Bruce and Louise!), and the audience reaction was pretty good, but I kept thinking to myself 'man, this is way too long'. And yet at the same time, I think, now that I can look at it a bit more objectively, the story moves too quickly, and is probably difficult to follow for many people.

Well, this new Fester Fish cartoon probably doesn't have either of those problems. If anything, it's too slow-paced and stupid. But I think the animation's better. You can decide for yourself soon.

Almost Done, But...

Well, I didn't end up finishing the Fester Fish cartoon for last night. I was pretty close, but I ran out of time, and decided to just submit the first episode of Space Goose instead, since I just had a DVD copy lying around.

I'd been hesitant to submit Space Goose to previous Drop Your Shorts festivals, for a few reasons. I feel like the other film-makers, who probably comprise most of the audience, might be annoyed that it's a cartoon, like "hey, that doesn't belong with our serious angsty black-and-white dramas!" They also might be put off by the fact that it's science-fiction. More than anything else, it's clearly not intended as a short film, but rather as part of a TV-style episodic series.

Oh well. The guy who runs the festival seemed happy to see another submission from me. He liked Slick Nick when I submitted back in 2008, and he even used it again at a "Best of" special screening.

The Fester Fish short will still be done soon, because I want to submit it to another show tomorrow at the Toronto Animated Images Society, but this time it'll actually be ready. I've only got a couple of hours of work left to do on it.

"Fugitive Goose" will be screened at the Revue Cinema on Wed. May 19 at 7:00. Admission is $2.

Space Goose Poster Image

A friend wanted to use a comic cover or poster of Space Goose in a film he's making, so I did this. I don't know if he'll end up using it, but I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. It's pretty boring though, and it definitely doesn't reflect the tone of the series. It makes it seem serious, but with inappropriately bright, cartoonish characters. Hyugh.



... Well, anyway, that's what I did last night.

BONUS FUN:
Here's another picture I sent him, that I did during my Design and Composition course at Max the Mutt. I think it was supposed to demonstrate an emphasis on the diagonal axis.

Space Goose - Banquet Bust-Up

The third episode of Space Goose is finished!

Space Goose - Space Race 7000

Here's the second episode. Well, I actually did a few months ago, before "Fugitive Goose," but I didn't want to release it until I'd already made another episode. This one served as a test/warm-up sort of thing, so that the real first episode would be a bit more polished and consistent.

Space Goose - Fugitive Goose

Here's the first episode, entitled "Fugitive Goose!"

Space Goose Teaser

Here's the intro to my next cartoon, Space Goose. It's about... a goose in space.


The title card for the first episode I did is on there, too.

This might not be the final version, at least audio-wise.