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Star Wars as told by someone who’s never seen it.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

PS: Don’t drink anything while you’re watching this. You might get it in your nose.

I’ve deliberately not posted online about politics over the past few months. I just didn’t want to get into it online. I still don’t want to get into it, but I am going to post political today. I’ve got a couple thoughts about the NDP that I’d like to put out there. They’re not exclusive to what’s going on in Parliament right now, but they are well illustrated by it. And while I’m qualifying this post, let me add that I’m not going to comment on the actual issue being discussed in Parliament right now.

To start with, a filibuster, which the NDP are about to engage in, is not illegal or wrong as far as parliamentary procedure is concerned. Our Canadian system of governance has a set of rules that all political parties know and play along with. Often politics is a game of tactics and a filibuster is a tactic.

That said, the current threat of NDP filibuster shows that when Jack Laton and his party were elected, they weren’t serious about trying to “get along with” and “work with” Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. In fact, Mr Layton stated as much when he qualified “we’ll play nice” with his “we won’t be walked all over”. Allow me to translate for Mr Layton:

When I said, the NDP would work with the government, I meant, the NDP would work with the government only if they enact the policies we desire. If they don’t, we’ll do the exact opposite of work with the government. We’ll argue, waste time and carry-on.

And so, we settle in for a NDP filibuster tonight. Way to contribute to a smooth running Parliament, Mr Layton.

Cover number one, the Muppets…

Cover number two, Hayseed Dixie…

Cover number three, four dudes in a VW…

I think the car should explode at the end of this one.

Cover number four, some no talent hack group…

So, this is the third Unfriendly Giant flash cartoon that I made. Again, I think it was a step up from the previous two in terms of effort and quality. Something that I notice right away is the new art style I used for the “props” in the cartoon. You’ll notice that there are lines edging many of the shapes on the skateboard and the BBQ. In the past, I kept things looking like (in my mind) paper or felt cutouts. Even when I animate, I imagine the art projects I did as a kid where I’d cut out all the body parts and pin them together at the joints. I think I also put more effort into the “acting” of the characters and the action of the cartoon as a whole. I felt that was needed because this cartoon was pretty heavy on dialogue, I thought.

Funny looking at the “rugrats” and/or “ankle biters” in the cartoon. They sort of remind me of chubby versions of my little Dude. I can’t believe I’d do an Unfriendly Giant cartoon and not put in an Easter Egg. If you can find it, let me know in the comments.

View full screen. Watch two more UFG cartoons: Health Day and Safety Day.

If you watch my first Unfriendly Giant flash cartoon right before this one, you’ll notice a few changes I made and a few things I learned. The first thing I notice is the pitch of the audio. For some reason, I sped-up the audio on my first Unfriendly Giant cartoon. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is, and that’s how it’ll always be.

The second thing that’s different is the mouth animation/vocal sync. For my first cartoon I was happy to have a mouth at all. It moved around Unfriendly’s face a bit and got bigger and smaller. For this cartoon, I changed the mouth drawings each frame. I think there are about five or seven different shapes that match different speaking sounds. That added a lot of work to this cartoon.

I spent a lot more time making animations within animations as well. You should be able to see lots of little reoccurring movements in all the characters. Is there anything that stands out to you as an improvement over my first UFG cartoon? Or at least a difference.

There are definitely two Easter Eggs in this cartoon. One at the end and one somewhere in the middle. Can you find them? I’ll post my final of the three UFG flash cartoons on Friday.

View full screen. Watch another UFG cartoon: Health Day.